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Dessert

White Lemon Cream

A lemon custard made with grated rind, sugar, cream, and soaked sponge biscuits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

White Lemon Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lemons

  1. Rub the rinds of the lemons with some lumps of loaf sugar and grate the remainder.

  2. Squeeze and strain the juice, then add the grated peel and sugar.

Make the cream

  1. In a bowl, combine the lemon mixture with the rich cream and whisk until very thick.

Assemble

  1. The next day, soak the sponge biscuits in white wine.

  2. Layer the soaked biscuits with the lemon cream.

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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Lemon + biscuittop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together697 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Cream + biscuittop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Cream + white winetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,760 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lemons
Provide the juice and peel that give the cream its sharp, fragrant flavour.
Rich cream
Adds fat and body, so the mixture whisks thick and holds its shape.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the cream and balances the acidity of the lemon juice.
Sponge biscuits
Soak up the white wine and give the layered dessert a soft, absorbent structure.

The step that matters

Whisking the lemon mixture with the cream until very thick. Cream thickens as its fat globules trap air and network together when whisked. Whisk too little and the layers will be runny; the acid from the lemon juice can also affect how the cream sets, so stop once it holds firm peaks.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cream, biscuit, white wine):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, biscuit, white wine. 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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