Why it works: Lemon and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 44,316 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓
Lemon Cream
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the base
Soak the peel of 3 large lemons in 1 pint of water for 4-5 hours.
Remove the peels and add the juice of 4 lemons and the dissolved saccharin to the water.
Beat the egg whites until stiff and mix them into the lemon mixture.
Strain the mixture through a fine sieve.
Cook and set
Heat gently over low heat, stirring continuously until thickened like cream.
Remove from heat and stir until cool, then pour into a glass dish.
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.
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Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together44,316 recipes
Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
Lemon and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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 whites
- Whipped to stiff foam, they lighten the mixture and help it thicken into a creamy texture.
- Lemon juice
- Provides the sharp acidity that defines the dish's flavour.
- Lemon peel
- Steeped in water to infuse the liquid with aromatic lemon oils.
The step that matters
Heating gently while stirring. Egg whites thicken when heated, but high heat or no stirring can overcook and curdle or scorch the mixture, leaving it grainy instead of smooth and creamy.
“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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