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Lemon Custard

A lemon‑flavored custard baked in pastry.

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

Why it works: Corn and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 349 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Custard

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil hot water and sugar together.

  2. Dissolve corn starch in cold water and add to the boiling mixture.

  3. Stir in egg yolks until thickened, then remove from heat.

  4. Add butter, salt, lemon juice, and grated rind.

Bake and serve

  1. Line pie plates with pastry and bake lightly.

  2. Pour custard into the baked pastry and bake until light brown.

  3. Top with meringue if desired.

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. Corn + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together349 recipes

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

  2. Walnut + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

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

  3. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  4. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

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

  5. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set and add richness.
Corn starch
Thickens the boiling liquid into a smooth, sliceable custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon
Provides acidity and aroma from the juice and grated rind.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother, richer texture and flavour.

The step that matters

Stir in egg yolks until thickened, then remove from heat. Egg yolks thicken when heated, but if the custard gets too hot or boils too long they can curdle and turn grainy. Stop heating as soon as it thickens.

Swap the walnut

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, corn, egg, butter, 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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