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Dessert

Lemon Sauce

A sweet and tangy sauce made with sugar, butter, lemon, egg, and nutmeg, simmered in boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Lemon Sauce

Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Lemon Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the egg, lemon juice, and nutmeg; beat hard for 10 minutes.

  3. Add the mixture to the boiling water one spoonful at a time.

  4. Place in a tin pan and stand it in a saucepan of boiling water.

  5. Keep boiling until the sauce is heated through but not boiling.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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
Creams with the sugar to give the sauce a rich, smooth body.
Sugar
Creamed with the butter to add sweetness and help build a light texture.
Egg
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it body and a smooth, custard-like texture.
Lemon
Juice and grated rind add acidity and bright citrus aroma.

The step that matters

Keep boiling until the sauce is heated through but not boiling. The egg thickens as it warms, but if the sauce gets too hot it can curdle or turn grainy. Heating gently over boiling water keeps it smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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