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Dessert

Lemon Sauce for Puddings and Shortcake

A lemon-flavored sauce made with water, sugar, cornstarch, lemon rind, lemon juice, butter, and optional sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and sherry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,505 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Lemon Sauce for Puddings and Shortcake

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the hot water and sugar for 3 minutes.

  2. Mix the cornstarch with a little cold water, then add it to the boiling mixture.

  3. Cook for 5 minutes, stirring constantly.

  4. Remove from heat and add the lemon juice and butter, stirring until the butter is melted.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  3. Lemon + sherrytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon 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

Cornstarch
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce as it heats.
Butter
Adds richness and a glossy finish to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Provides the sharp, acidic flavour that defines the sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and balances the lemon's acidity.

The step that matters

Adding the cornstarch mixture. Cornstarch must be mixed with cold water before it goes into the boiling liquid, otherwise it clumps. Stirring constantly while it cooks keeps the sauce smooth as the starch swells and thickens.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, sherry. 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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