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Dessert

Lemon Cream. No. 2

A lemon custard made by steeping lemon peels, adding juice and sugar, and thickening with egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 Cream. No. 2

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse the lemon

  1. Pare the peels of the lemons and place them in boiling water for 4 hours.

  2. Remove the peels and add the lemon juice and sugar to the water.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the egg yolks and mix them with the lemon mixture.

  2. Strain the mixture through a fine cloth into a porcelain-lined saucepan.

  3. Set over low heat and stir continuously until thickened, but do not let it boil.

  4. Remove from heat and let cool before serving in custard cups.

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. Sugar + eggtop 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and give it a rich, set texture as they cook gently.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemons
Their peels flavour the water with aroma, and their juice adds acidity.

The step that matters

Thicken over low heat without boiling. Egg yolks set at gentle temperatures. Boiling or strong heat can curdle them and make the custard grainy, so stir constantly and remove it once thickened.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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