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Sauce

Lemon Butter

A simple lemon butter sauce made with lemon zest, juice, sugar, butter, water, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grate the rinds of 2 lemons and juice all 3 lemons.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, mix the lemon juice, grated rinds, sugar, butter, and water.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil, stirring constantly.

  3. Once boiling, stir in the flour mixed with a little water.

  4. Boil for 2 minutes while stirring continuously.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

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

  4. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the sharpness of the lemon juice.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as it heats, giving the sauce body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel to the sauce.
Lemons
Provide acidity and aroma from the juice and grated rinds.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour mixture once boiling. Flour thickens only when heated, and added to a hot liquid unmixed it clumps. Keep stirring so the starch disperses evenly and the sauce thickens smoothly instead of lumping.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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