Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Sauce for Sweet Puddings

A lemon sauce made with butter, flour, sherry, water, sugar, and egg yolks for sweet puddings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 Sauce for Sweet Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the flavouring

  1. Rub the lemon rind onto some sugar lumps.

  2. Squeeze out the lemon juice and strain it.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and flour over medium heat until pale brown.

  2. Add the sherry, water, and strained lemon juice to the saucepan.

  3. Crush the sugar lumps and stir them into the sauce until very sweet.

  4. Once well mixed and the sugar is melted, add the beaten egg yolks.

  5. Keep stirring until the sauce thickens, but do not let it boil.

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. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they set with gentle heat, adding richness and a smooth body.
Flour
Thickens the liquid when cooked with butter, giving the sauce body.
Butter
Adds richness and a nutty flavour as it cooks with the flour.
Lemon
Provides acidity and fresh citrus aroma from the juice and rind.
Sherry
Adds aromatic depth and a wine flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Keep stirring after adding the egg yolks, and do not let the sauce boil. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat but can curdle or scramble if overheated. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly, and avoiding a boil keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

You might also like

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