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Dessert

Lemon Filling

A sweet lemon custard made with lemon rind, juice, butter, water, sugar, corn flour, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Filling

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine lemon rind, juice, butter, water, sugar, and corn flour in a saucepan.

  2. Stir over medium heat until the mixture boils.

  3. Remove from heat and let it cool slightly.

  4. Add egg yolks and beat well.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Lemon + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  4. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Butter and flour 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

Corn flour
Thickens the filling as it heats, giving it body.
Egg yolks
Enrich the filling and add richness and body once beaten in.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the lemon's acidity.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother texture and richer flavour.
Lemon
Provides the rind for aroma and the juice for tartness.

The step that matters

Add egg yolks and beat well. Egg yolks can scramble if added to a very hot mixture. Letting the filling cool slightly first, then beating the yolks in thoroughly, helps keep the filling smooth and evenly thickened.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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