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Dessert

Yellow' Lemon-cream, Without Cream

A lemon custard-like dessert made from lemon peel, juice, sugar, and egg yolks, thickened and served in glasses.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Yellow' Lemon-cream, Without Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lemons

  1. Slice the lemons very thin and soak them in water.

  2. Squeeze the juice from the lemons into a bowl with the powdered sugar.

Make the mixture

  1. Beat the egg yolks well and add the lemon peel and juice mixture, mixing thoroughly.

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

Cook and serve

  1. Heat the saucepan over low heat, stirring continuously until thick and hot but not boiling.

  2. Pour the mixture 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. 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 yolks
Proteins thicken the mixture as they gently heat, giving the cream its body and set.
Lemons
Juice supplies sharp acidity and the peel adds fragrant lemon aroma.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves easily into the juice, adding sweetness that balances the lemon's acidity.

The step that matters

Heating the mixture over low heat. Egg yolk proteins set when heated, but too much heat or boiling makes them curdle and turn grainy. Gentle, constant stirring keeps the custard smooth and thick.

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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