Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Sauce

A sweet sauce made with sugar, milk, butter, lemon juice, vanilla, citron, raisins, and candied cherries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Lemon Sauce

Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Lemon Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine white sugar, brown sugar, milk, and butter.

  2. Boil the mixture until it reaches a candy-like consistency.

  3. Just before removing from heat, stir in lemon juice, vanilla extract, citron, raisins, and candied cherries.

Serve

  1. Use the sauce between layers of white cake.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Vanilla + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together782 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

White sugar
Sweetens the sauce and, with brown sugar, cooks down to a candy-like thickness.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, molasses-like flavour and helps the sauce set firm.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that the sugars and butter cook into a thick sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for smooth richness and a glossy texture.
Citron
Adds chewy texture and candied fruit flavour throughout the sauce.

The step that matters

Boiling to candy-like consistency. Sugar concentration rises as water evaporates, so the sauce can turn grainy or stay too thin if boiled too little or too long. Watching for the candy-like stage controls final texture.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, butter, vanilla, raisin. 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.

More lemon sauce recipes

Cold 7for Sweet Puddings 5for Boiled Fowl 4Hard 3White 3 See all 278 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes