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Lemon Sauce

A sweet and tart sauce made with sugar, butter, egg, lemon juice and rind, nutmeg, and boiled water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the well-beaten egg and beat hard for 10 minutes.

  3. Gradually add boiling water, one spoonful at a time.

  4. Transfer the mixture to a tin pail and place it on top of a boiling tea kettle.

  5. Keep the kettle boiling and stir constantly until the sauce is very 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
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give the sauce a rich, smooth body.
Sugar
Creamed with butter to add sweetness and help build a light, aerated base.
Egg
Beaten in to add structure and thicken the sauce as it gently heats.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet, rich flavour of the sauce.

The step that matters

Heating over the boiling kettle. The egg must heat gently and stir constantly, or it can scramble or curdle instead of thickening into a smooth sauce. Keeping the sauce steadily warm, not boiling hard, lets the egg proteins set evenly.

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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