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Dessert

Lemon Custards

A lemon-flavored custard made by mixing egg yolks, lemon zest, lemon juice, sugar, and boiling water, then heating until thickened.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Lemon Custards

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 Custards

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Beat the yolks of 18 eggs until they look white and creamy.

  2. Grate the peel of 1 lemon and add the juice of 2 lemons.

  3. Sweeten the mixture to taste.

  4. Pour 1 pint of boiling water over the lemon and sugar mixture.

  5. Add the egg yolks and stir well.

  6. Strain the mixture through a sieve.

Cook and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into an earthen pitcher.

  2. Place the pitcher in a kettle of boiling water.

  3. Stir continuously until it thickens.

  4. Pour the thickened custard into jelly glasses.

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. 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).

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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set with gentle heat, giving it a rich, creamy body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that gives the custard its bright, sharp flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the sharpness of the lemon.

The step that matters

Stir continuously until it thickens. Egg yolks thicken as their proteins set with heat. Stirring keeps the heat even and prevents curdling or lumps where the custard touches the hot pitcher.

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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