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Dessert

White Lemon Cream

A sweet lemon custard made with powdered sugar, egg yolks, and lemon peel and juice, thickened over gentle heat.

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

Prepare

  1. Squeeze the juice from the lemons.

  2. Mix the lemon juice with the powdered sugar.

  3. Beat the egg yolks well.

  4. Add the lemon peel to the egg yolks.

  5. Add the lemon juice to the egg yolks. Mix thoroughly.

Make the custard

  1. Strain the mixture through a fine cloth into a saucepan.

  2. Heat over a gentle fire, stirring continuously 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 custard as they heat and set into a smooth, spoonable texture.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the custard and dissolves easily into the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright flavour that balances the sweetness.
Lemon peel
Adds aromatic lemon oils for fragrance and flavour.

The step that matters

Heat over a gentle fire, stirring continuously. Egg yolks thicken from heat but curdle if they get too hot or boil. Gentle, constant stirring spreads the heat evenly so the custard turns thick and smooth rather than grainy.

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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