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Dessert

Lemon-sauce

A sauce made with butter, sugar, lemon juice, lemon rind, nutmeg, cream, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 butter base

  1. Beat the butter and sugar together until creamy.

  2. Stir in the lemon juice and grated rind.

  3. Grate nutmeg on top of the sauce.

Make the syrup

  1. In a saucepan, combine the sugar, cream, and water.

  2. Boil the mixture.

Finish and serve

  1. Flavor to taste 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.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and adds richness and a smooth, soft texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, once dissolved, body and a glossy texture to the sauce.
Cream
Adds fat for a rich, smooth mouthfeel and a mellow body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the richness.
Lemon rind
Its oils add a fragrant lemon aroma without adding much extra sourness.

The step that matters

Boiling the sugar, cream and water. Cream and sugar can scorch on the bottom of the pan or boil over quickly. Keep the heat controlled and stir so the sugar dissolves evenly and the sauce does not burn.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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