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Dessert

Lemon Sauce

A sweet lemon sauce made with sugar, butter, egg, lemon juice and peel, thickened with boiling water.

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

Why it works: Butter and lemon 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

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Beat in the egg until very light.

  3. Add the lemon juice and grated peel, and beat hard for 10 minutes.

  4. Add the boiling water one tablespoon at a time while stirring.

Heat and serve

  1. Place the mixture in a tin pail and set it over a boiling tea kettle.

  2. Keep the sauce hot with steam, stirring constantly, but do not let it boil.

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. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

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

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give the sauce a smooth, rich body.
Sugar
Creamed with butter and sweetens the sauce while helping it become light and smooth.
Egg
Beaten until very light, adding richness and body that thickens the sauce as it gently heats.
Lemon
Juice and grated peel provide the sharp, fragrant citrus flavour that defines the sauce.

The step that matters

Keep the sauce hot without boiling. Egg proteins thicken gently with heat, but if the mixture boils they can scramble and turn grainy. Steam heat and constant stirring keep it warm enough to thicken smoothly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, 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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