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Dessert

Lemon Sauce

A thickened sauce made with flour, sugar, lemon juice, peel, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Lemon Sauce

Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Lemon Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Thicken the base

  1. In a double boiler, mix the flour and sugar together.

  2. Pour the boiling water over the mixture while stirring until it thickens.

Finish the sauce

  1. Remove from heat and add the lemon juice and grated peel.

  2. Pour the mixture over the well-beaten egg and mix well.

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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  2. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Vanilla + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Flour
Starch swells in the boiling water, thickening the sauce into a smooth body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Egg
Its proteins thicken and enrich the sauce as they gently warm.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright lemon flavor.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot mixture over the egg. Egg proteins set at moderate heat, so adding the hot mixture too quickly or without mixing can scramble the egg and leave lumps. Pouring slowly while stirring warms the egg gradually and keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, egg, vanilla. 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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