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Dessert

Lemon Butter

A lemon-flavored butter sauce made by cooking sugar, water, eggs, butter, corn starch, lemon juice, and rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,927 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a dish set over boiling water, combine the sugar and water.

  2. Add the well-beaten eggs and the butter.

  3. Stir in the corn starch, lemon juice, and lemon rind.

  4. Cook while stirring often to keep the mixture smooth.

Serve

  1. Use as a sauce, filling for tarts, or as jelly for layer cake.

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. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  2. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

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

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Thicken the mixture as they set and add richness to the sauce.
Corn starch
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, glossy body as it heats.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich mouthfeel and smooth texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that gives the sauce its bright, tangy flavour.

The step that matters

Cook while stirring often. Eggs can scramble if the mixture gets too hot or sits still, leaving lumps. Constant stirring over gentle heat spreads the heat evenly and keeps the sauce smooth as the starch and eggs thicken.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, butter, corn. 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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