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Lemon Sauce for Boiled Puddings

A lemon sauce made with lemon juice, cornstarch, water, sugar, egg yolks, and folded egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sugar 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 ↓

Lemon Sauce for Boiled Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Juice the lemons.

  2. In a saucepan, combine lemon juice, cornstarch, water, and sugar.

  3. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in the egg yolks.

Finish

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the mixture.

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

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

  2. Lemon + eggtop 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).

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

Cornstarch
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it body.
Egg yolks
Enrich the sauce and add richness and body once stirred in off the heat.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks and folded in, adding lightness and airiness to the sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and balances the tartness of the lemon juice.
Lemons
Provide the juice that gives the sauce its bright, sour flavour.

The step that matters

Remove from heat before stirring in the egg yolks. Egg yolks can scramble if they meet very hot liquid. Taking the pan off the heat first lets them blend smoothly and thicken gently rather than curdle.

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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