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Dessert

Lemon Curd Creams

A chilled dessert made from lemon juice, eggs, butter, gelatine, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Lemon Curd Creams

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Dissolve the saccharine in the water.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the water, beaten eggs, butter, lemon juice, and gelatine.

  3. Stir until the mixture thickens slightly and the gelatine dissolves.

  4. Strain the mixture into a basin.

Set and serve

  1. Add the brandy and whipped cream, and mix well.

  2. Pour the mixture into dariole moulds rinsed with cold water.

  3. Dip the moulds in warm water for a moment, then turn out.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Brandy + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,635 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  4. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Thicken the custard as they cook and give it a rich, set body.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rich mouthfeel in the creams.
Lemon juice
Provides the sharp acidity that defines the lemon curd flavour.
Gelatine
Sets the mixture so it holds its shape when turned out of the moulds.
Whipped cream
Adds air and fat for a light, soft texture.

The step that matters

Stir until the mixture thickens slightly. Eggs thicken as their proteins set with gentle heat; overheating can scramble them and leave a grainy texture, while underheating leaves the custard too thin to set properly with the gelatine.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, brandy, cream. 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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