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Dessert

White Lemon Cream

A chilled lemon custard made with powdered sugar, egg yolks, and lemon peel and juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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 ↓

White Lemon Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream

  1. Squeeze the juice from the lemons into a bowl with the sugar.

  2. Beat the egg yolks well and add the lemon peel and juice.

  3. Strain the mixture through a flannel into a saucepan.

  4. Set over gentle heat and stir until thick and hot, but not boiling.

Serve

  1. Pour into jelly glasses.

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. 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. Sugar + eggtop 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 yolks
Thicken the mixture as they heat, setting it into a smooth, rich cream.
Sugar
Sweetens the lemon juice and helps balance its sharpness.
Lemons
Provide the juice and peel that give the cream its sharp, fragrant flavour.

The step that matters

Set over gentle heat and stir until thick and hot, but not boiling.. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heating, but if the mixture boils the proteins curdle and the cream turns grainy. Low heat and constant stirring keep it smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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