Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Honey

A lemon-flavored custard made from butter, sugar, eggs, and lemon zest and juice.

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

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 Honey

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the sugar and stir until combined.

  3. In a bowl, beat the eggs and add them to the mixture, leaving out 2 egg whites.

  4. Grate the rinds of the lemons and add them along with the lemon juice.

  5. Simmer over low heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens to a honey-like consistency. Be careful not to let it burn.

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

Eggs
Thicken the mixture as they set during simmering, giving the custard its body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps it thicken into a smooth, glossy texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright citrus flavour that balances the sweetness.
Lemon rinds
Contribute aromatic lemon oils that add fragrance and depth of flavour.

The step that matters

Simmer over low heat, stirring constantly. Egg proteins set at moderate temperatures, so high heat or lack of stirring can scramble the eggs and make the custard grainy or burnt. Gentle, constant stirring keeps the mixture smooth as it thickens.

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.

You might also like

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