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Lemon Sauce

A simple lemon sauce made with sugar, lemon rind and juice, water, arrowroot or cornstarch, and butter.

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

Why it works: Arrowroot and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 553 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lemon Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Mix arrowroot or cornstarch with sugar in a bowl.

  2. Add boiling water and cook for twenty minutes, stirring occasionally.

  3. Stir in the lemon rind, juice, and butter.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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. Arrowroot + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  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. Arrowroot + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,073 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

Arrowroot or cornstarch
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the water, giving it body.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon rind and juice
Adds bright acidity and aroma to the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy finish.

The step that matters

Stirring while the sauce cooks. Starch that is not kept moving can settle and clump on the bottom of the pan, leaving lumps and uneven thickening. Stirring keeps the starch dispersed so it thickens evenly as it heats.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Arrowrootthe original
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Sweet potatofits about as well

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