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Dessert

Lemon Custards

A lemon custard made with sugar, lemon juice, rind, wine, and eggs, cooked gently and set in a water bath.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Lemon Custards

Why it works: Lemon and white wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,832 recipes. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

Lemon Custards

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Combine sugar, lemon juice, thin lemon rind, boiled inner rind, and white wine in a saucepan.

  2. Heat over low fire until thickened, but do not boil.

  3. Remove the lemon peel and set the mixture aside to cool.

Add the eggs and set

  1. Beat the egg yolks and egg whites together.

  2. Mix the beaten eggs with the cooled lemon mixture.

  3. Strain the mixture into a dish.

  4. Stir the strained mixture well.

  5. Place the dish in a pot of boiling water over low heat until set.

Finish and serve

  1. Grate lemon rind on top.

  2. Brown the grated rind with a hot salamander.

  3. Serve hot or cold.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + white winetop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,586 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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 and add richness as they set with gentle heat.
Egg whites
Add lightness and help the custard set with a delicate texture.
Double refined sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon juice
Provides the sharp acidity and bright lemon flavour.
White wine
Adds liquid and aromatic flavour to the custard base.

The step that matters

Heat over low fire until thickened, but do not boil. Egg proteins thicken gently with low heat; boiling can curdle the mixture and leave it grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Applefits less well
  4. Plumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, white wine, 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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