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Dessert

Lemon Sauce for Sweet Puddings

A lemon sauce made with lemon rind, juice, flour, butter, sherry, water, sugar, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Sauce for Sweet Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Rub the lemon rind onto some sugar lumps.

  2. Squeeze out the lemon juice and strain it.

  3. In a saucepan, melt the butter and flour over medium heat until pale brown.

  4. Add the sherry, water, and strained lemon juice to the saucepan.

  5. Crush the sugar lumps and stir them into the sauce until very sweet.

  6. Once mixed and the sugar is melted, add the beaten egg yolks.

  7. Stir continuously until the sauce thickens, but do not let it boil.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 sauce as they set with gentle heat, giving it a smooth, rich body.
Butter and flour
Form a roux that thickens the liquid and gives the sauce a nutty, toasted note.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce; the lemon rind is rubbed onto the lumps so their flavour is absorbed.
Lemon
Adds bright acidity and aroma from the juice and rind.
Sherry
Adds depth and a mellow, fruity aroma to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir continuously and do not let the sauce boil. Egg yolks begin to scramble and curdle when they get too hot, so the sauce can turn grainy. Constant stirring over gentle heat lets the yolks thicken it evenly and smoothly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sherry, 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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