Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Cream

A chilled lemon-flavored dessert made with sugar, eggs, cream, milk, and gelatin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Gelatin and cream match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,628 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Lemon Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the lemon base

  1. Put ½ pint of water in a saucepan and bring to a boil.

  2. Add the thinly shredded peel of 2 lemons and simmer for 15 minutes.

  3. Stir in 4 lb of caster sugar and boil for 2 minutes.

  4. Strain through a fine sieve, then add 3 well-beaten eggs and the juice of 2 lemons.

  5. Pour the mixture into a copper pan and stir until thick.

Add the gelatin and cream

  1. Soak ½ oz of gelatin in a little cold water.

  2. Once thick, turn the cream into a basin and dissolve the gelatin in boiling water.

Set and serve

  1. When nearly cold, mix the gelatin with the cream and pour into a mold.

  2. Let it stand until set, then turn out onto a serving dish.

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. Gelatin + creamtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Sugar + gelatintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  4. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatin
Sets the dessert into a firm, sliceable body as it cools.
Eggs
Thicken the lemon base as they set with gentle heat, adding body.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, soft texture through its fat.
Sugar
Provides sweetness and helps give the syrup body and balance.
Lemon juice and peel
Add acidity and bright lemon aroma that balance the sweetness.

The step that matters

Mixing the gelatin into the cream when nearly cold. Gelatin must be fully dissolved, and the mixture cooled until only nearly cold, before combining. If it is too hot, the cream can thin and the dessert may not set evenly; if it is too cold, the gelatin can begin to set in lumps.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, gelatin, cream, milk. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes