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Dessert

Lemon Sauce, No. 1

A thickened lemon sauce made with butter, sugar, egg yolks, lemon juice and rind, cooked in a double boiler.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,227 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Lemon Sauce, No. 1

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Cream the butter in a bowl.

  2. Gradually add the sugar while mixing.

  3. Incorporate the beaten egg yolks, lemon juice, and lemon rind.

  4. Stir in the boiling water.

Cook

  1. Cook the mixture in a double boiler until it thickens.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded body to the sauce.
Sugar
Provides sweetness that balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they cook gently and add richness.
Lemon
Adds acidity and bright aroma from the juice and rind.
Boiling water
Loosens the mixture so it can thicken into a pourable sauce.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture in a double boiler until it thickens. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if they get too hot. A double boiler provides gentle, indirect heat, letting the yolks thicken the sauce smoothly while you stir and watch for the point it coats a spoon.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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