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Lemon Float

A sweetened milk base with lemon flavor topped with beaten egg whites, optionally garnished with coconut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 306 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Lemon Float

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Beat the yolks of 4 eggs with 1 tablespoon of corn starch.

  2. Add 1 quart of milk and sugar to taste, then stir until it boils.

  3. Remove from heat and add ½ teaspoon of lemon essence.

Top and serve

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the whites of 2 eggs until stiff.

  2. Sweeten and flavor the egg whites, then pour them on top of the lemon mixture.

  3. Optionally, add coconut to the egg whites 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. Corn + coconuttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together306 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Milk + coconuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

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

  3. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Lemon + coconuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the milk mixture and give the custard its richness as they set with heat.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk mixture so the custard holds its body when boiled.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks to make the light, airy topping that floats on the custard.

The step that matters

Stirring the custard until it boils. The cornstarch needs to reach a full boil to thicken fully; stopping early leaves the custard thin, while the egg yolks can scramble if overheated and left unstirred.

Swap the coconut

The recipe marks coconut as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, corn, milk, sugar, lemon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Coconutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, corn, milk, sugar, lemon. 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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