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Dessert

English Lemon

A lemon custard made with sugar, butter, eggs, lemon juice, and peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,227 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

English Lemon

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curd

  1. In a double boiler, combine sugar, butter, egg yolks, egg whites, lemon juice, and lemon peel.

  2. Stir occasionally until the mixture thickens to the consistency of hominy.

Cool and store

  1. Remove from heat and let cool.

  2. Store in a sealed container.

  3. This mixture will keep for a long time.

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. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon 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

Sugar
Sweetens the curd and balances the sharpness of the lemon juice.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rich texture that coats the spoon.
Egg yolks
Thicken the curd as they gently set when heated.
Egg whites
Help the curd set and thicken, adding body to the mixture.
Lemon juice
Provides the acidity and bright tang that defines the curd.
Lemon peel
Contributes aromatic oils that give the curd its lemon fragrance.

The step that matters

Stirring over the double boiler until thickened. Eggs set gently at moderate heat; if the water is too hot or stirring stops, the egg proteins can scramble and make the curd grainy. Constant, gentle stirring keeps the texture smooth as it thickens.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, 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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