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Dessert

Lemon Cream

A custard made with cream, lemon juice, sugar, orange flower water, and eggs, strained into glasses.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Lemon Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub two or three lumps of castor sugar on one lemon until soaked.

  2. Extract the pulp and juice from the two lemons.

Make the cream

  1. Add the lemon to the cream in a double saucepan and stir continuously until warm.

  2. Mix the lemon juice, castor sugar, orange flower water, and the beaten egg whites and two yolks.

  3. Stir this mixture into the warm cream until it thickens.

  4. Remove from heat and strain through muslin into a jug.

  5. Once cold, pour into custard 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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

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

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

  5. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

Cream
Provides richness and a smooth, rich body that thickens with the eggs.
Eggs
Egg yolks and whites thicken the warm cream and set it into a custard.
Lemons
Supply acidity and fragrant oils that flavour the cream.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the cream and softens the sharpness of the lemon.

The step that matters

Stir the egg mixture into the warm cream until it thickens. Egg proteins thicken when heated gently; if the cream is too hot or stirred too little, the eggs can scramble and curdle, leaving a grainy texture.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raspberryfits about as well
  3. Orangethe original
  4. Raisinfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, lemon, 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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