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Dessert

Lemon Cream Salad

A chilled fruit salad with a lemon‑cream base made from egg yolks, sugar, flour, butter, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and banana match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 435 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Lemon Cream Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the lemon cream

  1. Beat the yolks of the eggs until light.

  2. Gradually add the sugar, flour, and lemon juice.

  3. Melt the butter in boiling water, then add the egg mixture and boil until thick.

  4. Remove from heat and fold in the whipped cream.

Assemble and serve

  1. Mix in the diced apple, sliced bananas, and pineapple.

  2. Chill thoroughly before serving.

  3. Serve on lettuce leaves in fancy fruit glasses.

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. Apple + bananatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together435 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the lemon mixture as they cook and set it into a smooth custard.
Whipped cream
Adds airy richness and a light, creamy texture to the custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the lemon custard and balances its tartness.
Lemon juice
Provides acidity that brightens the custard and offsets its sweetness.
Flour
Helps thicken the custard so it holds together when boiled.
Bananas
Add natural sweetness and a soft texture to the fruit mixture.

The step that matters

Boil the egg mixture until thick. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but overheating can make them curdle and turn grainy. Stir steadily and remove from heat once the custard thickens.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, flour, butter, cream, apple, banana. 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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