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Dessert

Lemon Sauce, for Sweet Puddings

A lemon sauce made with lemon rind, juice, flour, butter, sherry, water, sugar, and egg yolks, thickened over low heat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter 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 Sauce, for Sweet Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the flavouring

  1. Rub the rind of the lemon onto some lumps of sugar.

  2. Extract the juice, strain it, and set aside.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and flour over medium heat until lightly browned.

  2. Add the sherry, water, and strained lemon juice to the saucepan.

  3. Crush the sugar lumps that were rubbed on the lemon and stir them into the sauce until very sweet.

  4. Once well mixed and the sugar is melted, add the beaten yolks of 4 eggs.

  5. Stir the sauce continuously until it thickens, but do not allow it to boil or it will curdle.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Flour and butter 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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the sauce as they set with gentle heat, giving it a rich, smooth body.
Flour
Cooked with butter, it forms a roux that thickens the sauce and gives it body.
Butter
Melted with the flour, it carries flavour and adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce, and rubbing it with lemon rind lifts the citrus aroma into the sugar.
Lemon
Its juice adds acidity and brightness, while the rind adds fragrant citrus oil.

The step that matters

Stirring the sauce once the eggs are in. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat, but if the sauce boils the proteins tighten and scramble, so it curdles. Keep the heat low and stir constantly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sherry, 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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