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Dessert

Lemon Cream, Economical

A chilled lemon custard made with milk, bitter almonds, gelatine, lemon rind, sugar, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,655 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Lemon Cream, Economical

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Put the milk in a saucepan with the pounded almonds, gelatine, lemon rind, and lump sugar, then boil for 5 minutes.

  2. Beat the egg yolks.

  3. Strain the milk into a jug and add the yolks.

  4. Pour the mixture back and forth until nearly cold.

Finish and set

  1. Stir in the strained lemon juice briskly until the cream is almost cold.

  2. Pour the mixture into an oiled mould and let it set completely.

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. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  3. Milk + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

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

Lemon and sugar 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

Milk
Forms the creamy base that the cream is built on.
Gelatine
Sets the liquid cream into a firm, sliceable body as it cools.
Egg yolks
Enrich the cream and thicken it gently when heated with the milk.
Lump sugar
Sweetens the cream and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemons
Provide the acidic lemon juice and aromatic rind that flavour the cream.

The step that matters

Stir in the lemon juice while the cream is still warm but nearly cold. Adding acidic juice too early or too hot can curdle the egg yolk mixture, and stirring briskly while it cools helps keep the cream smooth and evenly set.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Milletfits about as well
  2. Almondthe original
  3. Pistachiofits about as well
  4. Walnutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, lemon, 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.

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