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Sauce

Lemon Butter

A sauce made from lemon zest, juice, eggs, and sugar, cooked over low heat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lemons

  1. Grate the yellow part of the lemons and squeeze out the juice, removing any seeds.

Make the sauce

  1. Beat the eggs in a bowl, then add the sugar and stir thoroughly.

  2. Place the mixture over low heat and cook until it begins to thicken, about 5 minutes.

  3. To prevent scorching, place the saucepan in a larger vessel of water and stir constantly.

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

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

  2. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

Eggs
Set and thicken the sauce as they cook, giving it body.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and balances the tartness of the lemon.
Lemons
Provide the acidity and aroma that define the sauce's flavour.

The step that matters

Cooking the egg mixture gently. Egg proteins set at a narrow temperature range, so high heat can scramble the eggs. Gentle heat, or a water bath as the step describes, and constant stirring keep the sauce smooth and thickened.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, 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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