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Lemon Sauce

A sweet lemon sauce made with sugar, butter, eggs, water, lemon juice, and walnuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Lemon Sauce

Why it works: Lemon and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,149 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cream together the sugar and butter.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks and mix well.

  3. Pour in the boiling water and lemon juice.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites and chopped walnuts.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

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

  2. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and, creamed with butter, traps air that lightens the texture.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy body when creamed with sugar.
Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the sauce as they cook gently in the hot liquid.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright lemon flavour that balances the sweetness.
Egg whites
Folded in, they add airiness and a light, fluffy texture.
Walnuts
Add a crunchy texture and a toasty, nutty flavour.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites gently. Beaten egg whites hold air in a foam. Stirring vigorously deflates that foam, so the sauce turns heavy instead of light. Use a few broad, gentle folds until just combined.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits about as well
  3. Walnutthe original
  4. Milletfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, lemon. 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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