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Dessert

Hamburg Cream

A custard-like dessert made with egg yolk, sugar, lemon juice, salt, and folded egg white, chilled and served with ladyfingers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Hamburg Cream

Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Hamburg Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Beat the egg yolk slightly.

  2. Add the sugar, lemon juice, and salt.

  3. Cook over hot water until the mixture thickens slightly.

Finish and serve

  1. Fold in the beaten egg white until stiff.

  2. Turn into a glass and chill.

  3. Serve with lady fingers.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Egg yolk
Thickens and sets gently as it is warmed, giving the cream body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and a bright, tart flavour that balances the sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream and offsets the sharpness of the lemon juice.
Egg white
Beaten until stiff and folded in, it adds lightness and an airy texture.

The step that matters

Cook over hot water until the mixture thickens slightly. Egg yolk thickens when gently heated but can curdle or scramble if it gets too hot. Gentle heat over water keeps it smooth while it thickens.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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