Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Puff

A light lemon mousse made by folding beaten egg whites with powdered sugar and a cooked lemon yolk mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Puff

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Separate the eggs.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  3. Fold the powdered sugar into the egg whites.

Make the yolk mixture

  1. Beat the yolks with the grated lemon rind, lemon juice, and boiling water in another bowl.

  2. Cook the yolk mixture in a double boiler until thick like cream.

  3. Fold the thickened yolk mixture into the egg whites.

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. Egg + sugartop 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

Eggs
Whites whipped to stiff peaks give the dessert its airy, light structure.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the dish and dissolves easily into the whipped whites.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright lemon flavor to the yolk mixture.
Lemon rind
Contributes aromatic lemon oil and flavor to the yolk mixture.

The step that matters

Cook the yolk mixture in a double boiler until thick like cream. Gentle heat thickens the yolks through gradual coagulation without scrambling them. Overheating curdles the yolks, and the mixture then cannot fold smoothly into the whipped whites.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, 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.

You might also like

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