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Dessert

A Good Dessert

A lemon custard made with sugar, lemon rind, boiling water, egg whites, yolk, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,366 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

A Good Dessert

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the syrup

  1. Rub the rind of a lemon onto the sugar.

  2. Add the boiling water and let it stand until completely cold.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the egg whites very lightly and add one yolk.

  2. Mix everything together with a little lemon juice.

  3. Pour the mixture into a pitcher and set it in a pan of boiling water.

  4. Stir until it thickens.

  5. If it is difficult to thicken, add 2 teaspoons of rice flour with the boiling water.

  6. Once thickened and cold, pour it into cups.

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. Lemon + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Rice + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Egg whites
Whisked into the mixture to add structure and body as the custard sets.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps the custard thicken smoothly when heated.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright flavour that cuts the sweetness.
Rice flour
Helps thicken the custard if it is slow to set.

The step that matters

Stirring over boiling water until it thickens. Egg proteins set gently with heat, so the custard can curdle or stay thin if overheated or left unstirred. Stirring keeps the heat even and the texture smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, rice, flour. 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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