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Dessert

Lemon Creams

A citrus dessert made by rubbing lemons with sugar, adding lemon juice, cream, whisking to froth, and serving chilled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Lemon Creams

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Lemon Creams

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub the lemons with sugar until the aroma is absorbed.

  2. Squeeze the juice of one lemon onto the sugar in a large bowl.

Make the creams

  1. Add the cream and whisk continually until froth forms.

  2. Spoon the froth from the top and place it on a sieve.

Serve

  1. Serve in glasses shortly before serving.

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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Lemon + creamtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,640 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

Lemons
Their peel gives aroma and their juice adds acidity that brightens the cream.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and draws aromatic oils out of the lemon peel.
Cream
Its fat traps air when whisked, forming the light, creamy froth.

The step that matters

Whisk the cream until froth forms. Whisking traps air in the cream's fat, creating froth. Whisking too long can make the fat clump and turn grainy, so stop when the froth forms and watch it closely.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream. 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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