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Dessert

Lemon Sponge

A lemon gelatin dessert made with eggs, sugar, and lemon juice, folded with beaten egg whites and chilled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Sponge

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Strain the lemon juice over the sugar.

  2. Beat the egg yolks and mix with ½ cup of the water used to soak the gelatine.

  3. Add the sugar and lemon juice to the yolk mixture and cook until it begins to thicken.

  4. Stir in the soaked gelatine until dissolved.

Cool and set

  1. Strain the mixture into a basin and place it in a pan of water to cool.

  2. Whisk until it cools but does not harden.

  3. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites until it begins to thicken.

  4. Pour into a mold and refrigerate to harden.

Serve

  1. Serve with powdered sugar and cream.

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.

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. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard and whites are folded in to make the sponge light.
Lemon juice
Provides the acidity and bright flavour that balances the sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and balances the sharpness of the lemon juice.
Gelatine
Sets the mixture so it holds its shape when chilled.

The step that matters

Cooking the yolk mixture until it begins to thicken. Overheating egg yolks can scramble them, while undercooking leaves the custard thin. Stopping at the first thickening keeps it smooth and ready to combine with the gelatine and whites.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar. 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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