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Lemon Custard

A custard made with lemon juice, sugar, boiling water, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Lemon Custard

Why it works: Lemon and sugar 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 ↓

Lemon Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Combine the lemon juice, sugar, and boiling water in a saucepan, bring to a boil, and strain the mixture.

  2. Separate the eggs and beat the yolks until creamy.

  3. Pour the boiling syrup over the yolks, stirring constantly.

  4. Place the mixture in the top part of a double boiler and cook until it begins to thicken.

Finish and chill

  1. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

  2. Let the custard stand until perfectly cold.

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 + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar 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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard as they cook, and folded whites lighten its texture.
Lemon juice
Provides the sharp acidity and bright flavour that defines the custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the sourness of the lemon juice.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling syrup over the yolks. Adding the hot syrup slowly while stirring constantly gradually warms the yolks. If it is poured too fast or unstirred, the yolks can scramble into lumps instead of forming a smooth custard.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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