Why it works: Buttermilk and sugar match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,973 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓
Lemon Cream
Ingredients
Directions
Combine
Combine the cream and buttermilk in a bowl.
Add the sugar, lemon juice, and lemon oil.
Rub the sugar on the lemon rind to extract the oil.
Chill and finish
Place the mixture in a freezer on ice before adding the lemon.
Stir well to combine all ingredients.
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.
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Buttermilk + sugartop 9% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together2,973 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Cream + buttermilktop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together674 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Buttermilk + lemontop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together501 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 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
- Pure cream
- Provides richness and a smooth, fatty body to the mixture.
- Buttermilk
- Adds mild tang and acidity while thickening the cream base.
- Loaf sugar
- Sweetens the cream and, rubbed on the rind, lifts out lemon oil.
- Lemon juice
- Adds bright acidity that cuts through the richness of the cream.
- Lemon oil
- Provides the strong aromatic lemon flavour from the rind.
The step that matters
Rubbing the sugar on the rind. Lemon oil sits in the peel's tiny pockets, and rubbing with sugar abrades them to release it. Skipping or rushing this step leaves the flavour weak, since the oil is what carries the lemon aroma.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, buttermilk, sugar):
- Vanillafits better
- Raisinfits better
- Strawberryfits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against cream, buttermilk, 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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