Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Filling

A lemon custard-like filling made with flour, water, sugar, butter, lemon zest, juice, and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Filling

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Make a smooth paste of the flour and 2 tablespoons of cold water.

  2. In a saucepan, cook the remaining cold water, sugar, grated lemon rind, and butter until the sugar dissolves and the mixture is boiling.

  3. Slowly stir in the flour mixture and cook until clear and smooth, about 15 minutes.

  4. Add lemon juice and beaten egg yolk, and cook for 2 more minutes.

Cool and use

  1. Cool before spreading on cake.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flour
Its starch thickens the filling as it heats in liquid, giving body and structure.
Egg yolk
Thickens and enriches the filling, adding richness and a smoother texture.
Lemon
Juice gives sharp acidity and the grated rind adds bright aroma.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the lemon's acidity.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich, smooth mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour paste. Adding the flour paste slowly while stirring lets the starch disperse evenly, so the filling thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps. Starch needs to keep cooking in hot liquid until clear and smooth, so the thickening is fully set.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, butter, 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.

More lemon filling recipes

Apple 4 See all 62 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes