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Dessert

Lemon Salad

A chilled lemon cream salad made with grated lemon peel, lemon juice, isinglass, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Lemon Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lemons

  1. Grate the peel of 2 or 3 lemons into a dish.

  2. Squeeze the juice of 3 lemons over the grated peel and sweeten to taste.

Make the cream mixture

  1. Dissolve 1 ounce of isinglass in a small amount of water.

  2. Boil 1 quart of cream and strain the dissolved isinglass into it.

  3. Pour the mixture into a jug slowly to create froth.

Set the dish

  1. Do not move the dish until the contents are completely cold.

  2. Pour the hot cream mixture into the dish as safely as possible.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + creamtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,640 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Lemon and sugar 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

Lemons
Their juice and peel supply the sharp acidity and bright aroma.
Isinglass
A gelling agent that sets the mixture into a firm body as it cools.
Cream
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, soft texture.

The step that matters

Leave the dish undisturbed until completely cold. Isinglass sets as the mixture cools, so moving the dish while it is setting can break up the forming structure and leave the texture uneven.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar. 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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