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Dessert

Hamburg Cream

A lemon custard made by cooking sugar, lemon zest and juice with egg yolks, then folded with beaten whites and chilled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Hamburg Cream

Why it works: Sugar and lemon 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 ↓

Hamburg Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream

  1. Stir together the grated rind and juice of the lemons with the sugar.

  2. Add the well-beaten yolks of the eggs and mix well.

  3. Place the mixture in a tin pail and set it in a pot of boiling water.

  4. Stir for 3 minutes, then remove from heat.

  5. Fold in the well-beaten egg whites.

Serve

  1. Serve in custard glasses when cold.

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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the mixture as it heats, and whites add lightness when folded in.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream and helps stabilise the eggs during gentle cooking.
Lemons
Juice adds acidity and bright flavour, while the rind adds aroma.

The step that matters

Stirring over boiling water. Egg yolks thicken gently at moderate heat. If the mixture gets too hot or is stirred too little, it can curdle or turn grainy, so keep the heat controlled and stir steadily.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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