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Dessert

Lemon Custard

A custard made with sugar, lemon juice, lemon peel, white wine, and eggs, cooked over a pot of boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Lemon Custard

Why it works: Lemon and white wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,832 recipes. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

Lemon Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine sugar, lemon juice, lemon peel, and white wine in a saucepan.

  2. Boil for 15 minutes.

  3. Remove the lemon peel.

  4. Let the mixture cool.

Make the custard

  1. Pour the cooled mixture into a dish.

  2. Beat the eggs and mix them with the cooled mixture.

  3. Strain the mixture back into the dish.

  4. Stir well.

  5. Set the dish over a pot of boiling water.

  6. Cook until thickened.

Finish and serve

  1. Grate lemon peel on top.

  2. Brown the grated peel with a salamander.

  3. Serve hot or cold.

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. Lemon + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + white winetop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,586 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Set the custard to a thick texture as they cook and thicken.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Provides acidity and bright lemon flavour to the custard.
White wine
Adds liquid and aromatic depth to the lemon base.

The step that matters

Cook until thickened. Egg proteins set gradually with gentle heat. Heating too fast or too long over boiling water can curdle the eggs, so the custard should be cooked slowly and stirred.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Applefits less well
  4. Plumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, white wine, 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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