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Dessert

Lemon Sauce

A sweet and tart sauce made from lemon juice, sugar, water, butter, and thickened with corn starch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Lemon Sauce

Why it works: Lemon and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,927 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine sugar, water, and lemon juice and rind.

  2. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat.

  3. In a small bowl, mix corn starch with a little water to make a slurry.

  4. Stir the slurry into the saucepan and cook until thickened.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove from heat and stir in butter until melted.

  2. Allow to cool slightly before serving.

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. Lemon + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  2. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Corn starch
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce as it heats with the water.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel when stirred in off the heat.
Lemon juice and rind
Provides the bright, sour citrus flavour and aroma that define the sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and balances the acidity of the lemon.

The step that matters

Stirring the slurry into the saucepan. Cornstarch must be fully dispersed in cold liquid before heating, or it clumps. It thickens as the starch granules swell with heat, so the sauce should be kept moving while it cooks to stay smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, butter, corn. 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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