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Dessert

Lemon Cream

A chilled lemon custard made with lemon zest, juice, water, egg whites, yolks, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Lemon Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the rinds from the lemons as thinly as possible.

  2. Squeeze the juice from the lemons and mix it with the spring water.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the egg whites until very stiff and add to the lemon mixture.

  2. Sweeten to taste and stir continuously until it thickens, being careful not to boil.

  3. Strain the mixture through a cloth.

  4. Mix in the beaten egg yolks and heat gently until thickened.

Cool and serve

  1. Pour into a bowl and let it cool completely before serving in 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. Egg + sugartop 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 whites
Beaten until stiff, they trap air and give the custard a light, airy texture.
Egg yolks
Heated gently, they coagulate and thicken the custard into a smooth set.
Lemons
Their juice provides the sharp acidity and bright lemon flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the sourness of the lemon juice.

The step that matters

Heating the custard gently without boiling. Egg yolk proteins set as they heat, so gentle, constant stirring spreads the heat evenly. If the mixture gets too hot, the proteins tighten too far and curdle, leaving a grainy texture instead of a smooth custard.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar. 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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