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Dessert

Lemon Sauce

A sweet lemon sauce made with butter, sugar, cream, eggs, and lemon zest and juice, served cold with puddings or cake.

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

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Lemon Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, beat together the butter, sugar, and egg yolks until well combined.

  2. Add the grated rind and juice of the lemon, and mix well.

  3. Slowly beat in the cream until fully incorporated.

  4. Place the mixture in a basin over a pot of boiling water and stir until it thickens and becomes glossy.

Cool and serve

  1. Remove from heat and set aside to cool on ice.

  2. Serve cold with hot puddings or cake.

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

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

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

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

  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. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they heat, giving it a smooth, glossy body.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon
Provides bright acidity and aroma from its rind and juice.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the sauce's texture.

The step that matters

Thickening over boiling water. Egg yolks thicken from gentle heat, around 70 to 80 degrees Celsius. If the water boils too hard or the sauce is overheated, the yolks can scramble and turn grainy. Stir steadily and watch for it to coat the spoon.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits about as well
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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

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