Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Sauce

A thickened sauce made with arrowroot or corn starch, sugar, lemon rind and juice, water, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Lemon Sauce

Why it works: Arrowroot and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 553 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lemon Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Mix arrowroot or corn-starch with sugar.

  2. Add boiling water and cook for 20 minutes.

  3. Stir in lemon rind, juice, and butter.

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. Arrowroot + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + buttertop 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. Arrowroot + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,073 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

Arrowroot or corn-starch
Thickens the sauce as it cooks, giving it body and a smooth texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and balances the tartness of the lemon.
Lemon rind and juice
Supplies bright acidity and aroma that flavour the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy finish to the sauce.

The step that matters

Add boiling water and cook for 20 minutes. Starch thickens only once it is hot enough to swell and gelatinise, so the mixture must be kept at a proper simmer long enough for it to thicken fully and lose any raw starch taste.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Arrowrootthe original
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Sweet potatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, butter. 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.

More lemon sauce recipes

Cold 7for Sweet Puddings 5for Boiled Fowl 4Hard 3White 3 See all 278 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes