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Lemon Cream Sauce, Hot

A hot sauce made from milk, flour, sugar, egg yolks, and lemon zest and juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Lemon Cream Sauce, Hot

Why it works: Milk and wheat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Lemon Cream Sauce, Hot

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan until it boils.

  2. Stir in the wheat flour and sugar.

  3. Whisk in the egg yolks until well combined.

  4. Remove from heat and add the grated lemon rind and juice.

  5. Stir well and serve hot in a sauce tureen.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Wheat + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together585 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the sauce thickens and carries flavour through.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they set gently with heat, giving it a smooth, creamy texture.
Wheat flour
Helps stabilise the sauce and adds body so it coats a spoon.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright citrus flavour to the cream sauce.

The step that matters

Add the egg yolks gently. Egg yolks thicken by setting when heated, so if the milk is too hot when they go in, they can scramble and leave lumps. Whisking them in steadily and keeping the heat moderate helps keep the sauce smooth.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, wheat, flour, sugar, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, wheat, flour, sugar, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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