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Lemon Cream

A chilled lemon‑flavored cream beverage made with lemon juice, sugar, boiling water, egg whites, tartaric acid, and carbonate of soda.

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 Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Pare the rinds of the lemons and squeeze the juice into a bowl.

  2. Add the lemon juice to 3 lbs of lump sugar.

  3. Pour 5 pints of boiling water over the sugar.

  4. Let it cool completely.

  5. Add the beaten egg whites.

  6. Add ½ lb of tartaric acid.

Bottle and finish

  1. Bottle the mixture.

  2. Keep it well corked.

  3. Mix 2 tablespoons of the cream with a pinch of carbonate of soda.

  4. Fill up with water.

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. Sugar + eggtop 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

Egg whites
Beaten egg whites add foam and body to the mixture.
Tartaric acid
Adds sharp acidity that gives the drink its tang.
Lump sugar
Provides sweetness and balances the acidity of the lemon and tartaric acid.
Lemons
Supply the juice and aromatic oils from the rinds for flavour and aroma.

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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