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Sauce

Butter and Lemon Sauce

A sauce made from butter, lemon juice, egg yolks, salt, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Butter and Lemon Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over gentle heat.

  2. Squeeze the juice from the lemons and remove the seeds.

  3. In a bowl, separate the yolks from the whites of the eggs.

Make the sauce

  1. Gradually add the melted butter to the egg yolks, stirring continuously over low heat until the mixture begins to thicken.

  2. Remove the sauce from heat as soon as it thickens, then stir in the lemon juice, salt, and cayenne pepper.

Serve

  1. Serve the sauce immediately.

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 + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Lemon and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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

Butter
Adds fat that gives the sauce richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
Egg yolks
Emulsify the butter and thicken the sauce as their proteins set with gentle heat.
Lemons
Supply acidity and bright citrus aroma that cut through the rich butter and yolks.

The step that matters

Adding the butter to the yolks over low heat. Egg yolk proteins thicken within a narrow temperature range. Adding butter slowly while stirring lets the yolks emulsify with it, and removing the sauce from heat as soon as it thickens prevents the yolks from overcooking and curdling.

“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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