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Lemon Sauce for Puddings

A lemon sauce made with butter, flour, sugar, sherry, water, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 Sauce for Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the infusion

  1. In a bowl, combine the rind and strained juice of the lemon.

  2. Pour in the sherry and water, and let it infuse for a while.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, mix the butter and flour over medium heat until slightly browned.

  2. Gradually pour in the infused liquid, add the sugar, and boil gently until smooth.

  3. Remove from heat and let cool for a minute, then stir in the beaten egg yolks.

  4. Stir until the mixture thickens, but do not let it boil after adding the eggs.

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. Sherry + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and enrich its texture as they set with gentle heat.
Flour
Thickens the butter and liquid into a smooth, stable sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounded flavour, and helps the flour brown lightly.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon
Provides the bright acidity and aroma from its rind and juice.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolks off the heat, then do not boil. Egg yolks set and curdle when overheated, so the sauce must be cooled slightly before adding them and kept below a boil to stay smooth and thickened.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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