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Lemon Custards

A custard flavored with lemon juice and zest, sweetened with sugar and thickened over low heat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Lemon Custards

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 Custards

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Beat the eggs in a bowl.

  2. Add sugar, water, and grated lemon peel to the eggs and stir well.

  3. Gradually add the lemon juice to the mixture.

  4. Pour the mixture into a pan and stir over low heat with a wooden spoon until thickened like custard.

Serve

  1. Strain the custard into glasses or a glass dish.

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. Lemon + sugartop 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. 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

Eggs
Coagulate as they heat, thickening the liquid into a set custard.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright lemon flavour that cuts through the sweetness.
White sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the sharpness of the lemon.

The step that matters

Stirring over low heat until thickened. Egg proteins set at moderate temperatures, so high heat or neglected stirring can scramble the eggs into lumps. Gentle, constant stirring keeps the custard smooth and lets it thicken evenly.

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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