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Sauce

Creamy Sauce

A light sauce made with lemon, apple, eggs, and sugar, cooked over boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,551 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Creamy Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Beat the egg yolks and sugar together.

  2. Add the grated rind and juice of half a lemon.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg whites and grated apple gradually.

Cook

  1. Cook over boiling water for three minutes, stirring constantly.

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 + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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 sauce as they heat and add richness and body.
Egg whites
Folded in beaten, they add lightness and an airy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and balances the lemon's sharpness.
Lemon
Adds acidity and fragrant aroma from the rind and juice.
Apple
Adds moisture, body and fruity flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cook over boiling water, stirring constantly. Egg yolks thicken gently as they warm. If the heat is too high or stirring stops, they can scramble and turn grainy. Constant stirring keeps the heat even so the sauce stays smooth.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, 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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