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Dessert

Egg Cream

A thickened lemon custard made with egg yolk, sugar, and beaten egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Egg Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the egg

  1. Separate the yolk and white of the egg.

Make the lemon custard

  1. Beat the sugar with the yolk until well mixed.

  2. Add the lemon juice and rind.

  3. Stir slowly over hot water until the mixture begins to thicken.

  4. Add the beaten egg white.

  5. Stir until the mixture resembles very thick cream.

  6. Stir occasionally until cool.

  7. Pour into a glass dish.

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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

Egg
The yolk thickens the mixture and the white adds lightness to the cream.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and helps the yolk blend smoothly into it.
Lemon
Adds acidity and aroma; its juice and rind flavour the cream.

The step that matters

Stir slowly over hot water until the mixture begins to thicken. Egg yolk proteins set when heated, so gentle, steady heat thickens the mixture smoothly. Too much heat or fast stirring can curdle it into lumps.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar. 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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