Name: Lemon Sauce
Ingredients: 2 lemons; 1 pint water; to taste sweetener; 1 tablespoon butter

Why it works: Lemon and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,227 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Lemon Sauce

Ingredients

2 lemons
1 pint water
to taste sweetener
1 tablespoon butter

Directions

Make the sauce

Remove the rind from the lemons and cut them into quarters.
Add the lemon quarters to the water and sweeten to taste.
Add the butter and heat until thickened and smooth.
Strain before serving.

Serve

Serve with puddings or fritters.

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.

Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lemons: Provide the sharp acidity and bright citrus aroma that define the sauce.
Butter: Adds richness and helps give the sauce a smooth, glossy texture.
Sweetener: Balances the sourness of the lemons for a rounded flavour.

“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.