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Dessert

Lemon Filling for Cake

A lemon-flavored filling made with powdered sugar, egg, lemon juice and zest, boiling water, and cornstarch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Filling for Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a bowl, mix together the powdered sugar and egg until well combined.

  2. Add the lemon juice and zest to the mixture.

  3. Pour in the boiling water and stir well.

Cook and thicken

  1. Cook the mixture in a double boiler until thickened.

  2. Gradually add the cornstarch, stirring constantly until the filling is smooth.

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

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

  2. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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

Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and body to the filling.
Egg
Its proteins set with gentle heat, helping the filling thicken and hold together.
Lemon juice and zest
Provide tartness and bright lemon aroma.
Cornstarch
Swells with heat and liquid to thicken the filling into a smooth, spreadable texture.

The step that matters

Adding the cornstarch. Cornstarch clumps if dropped in at once. Adding it gradually while stirring constantly keeps it dispersed, so it thickens evenly and the filling stays smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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