Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Cream

A lemon-flavored custard made with boiling water, corn starch, eggs, and sugar, served chilled with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Corn and lemon 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 Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Moisten corn starch with cold water.

  2. Add the moistened corn starch to the boiling water and lemon juice.

  3. Beat the egg yolks and sugar together.

  4. Add the beaten yolk mixture to the corn starch mixture.

  5. Boil for 5 minutes, then remove from heat.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the beaten egg whites until well combined.

  2. Serve cold in punch glasses topped with whipped cream.

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. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Corn + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 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

Corn starch
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, set cream when it boils.
Eggs
Yolks thicken and enrich the custard, while whites add lightness to the finished cream.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds tartness and bright citrus flavour.

The step that matters

Boil for 5 minutes. Cornstarch only thickens fully once it reaches a boil and stays boiling for a while. The egg yolks also need that heat to thicken the mixture and be cooked through, so cutting the boil short can leave the cream thin.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, 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.

More lemon cream recipes

Pie 54Sauce 18Pudding 17White 9Italian 8Cake 8 See all 189 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesCorn CakeCorn Cake90 recipes