Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Filling

A lemon custard-like filling made with water, sugar, flour, lemon rind and juice, egg yolk, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Filling

Ingredients

Directions

Make the flour paste

  1. In a bowl, mix 2 tablespoons of cold water with the flour until smooth.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolk and mix vigorously with a fork.

Cook the filling

  1. In a saucepan over boiling water, combine the remaining cold water, sugar, lemon juice, lemon rind, and butter.

  2. Once boiling, stir in the flour mixture and cook until shiny.

  3. Let it cool partially before using.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Thickens the filling as its starch swells and sets when heated.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps thicken and enrich the filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon
Provides acidity and bright flavor, with the rind adding aroma.
Butter
Adds fat for smoothness, richness and a glossy finish.

The step that matters

Cook until shiny after adding the flour mixture. Stirring as the mixture heats lets the starch swell evenly and thicken without lumps. Cooking it fully also removes any raw floury taste, so the filling sets properly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, egg, butter. 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.

More lemon filling recipes

Apple 4 See all 62 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes