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Dessert

Lemon Sauce, for Puddings

A lemon sauce made with lemon, sugar, butter, flour, and boiling water, served with grated nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Lemon Sauce, for Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lemon

  1. Boil the lemon skin in plenty of water until tender.

  2. Cut the lemon into slices, then into quarters.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the lemon juice, sugar, butter, and flour.

  2. Gradually stir in the boiling water.

  3. Cook over low heat for 10 minutes, stirring constantly.

Serve

  1. Serve with grated nutmeg on top.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Wheat + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together359 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Adds fat that gives the sauce a rich, smooth mouthfeel.
Wheat flour
Starch thickens the liquid as it heats, giving the sauce body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Fresh lemon
Supplies juice for acidity and aromatic zest-like flavour from the skin.

The step that matters

Cook over low heat while stirring constantly. Flour starch thickens as it heats, but high heat or no stirring can scorch the butter and sugar or leave lumps in the sauce.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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