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Dessert

Lemon Cream

A lemon custard made with egg yolks, sugar, wine, lemon juice, grated rind, and folded with stiff egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Wine and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,157 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Lemon Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Beat the egg yolks until very light.

  2. Add sugar, wine, lemon juice, and grated lemon rind.

  3. Place the mixture in a pan over boiling water, stirring until it thickens to the consistency of rich cream.

Finish and serve

  1. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth and gently stir in the custard.

  2. Serve in custard glasses or line a glass dish with stale cake soaked in wine and pour the custard over it.

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. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + winetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together9,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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 yolks
Thicken the custard as they set over gentle heat, giving it richness.
Egg whites
Beaten to a froth, they add airiness and lightness to the finished custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the lemon and wine.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright citrus flavour.
Grated lemon rind
Adds aromatic lemon oil for fragrance and flavour.

The step that matters

Thickening over boiling water. Egg yolks set at low, steady heat, so the pan should sit over water rather than direct heat. Stirring keeps the custard smooth, and too much heat can curdle it.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, wine. 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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