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Dessert

Yellow Lemon Cream, Without Cream

A lemon custard made from lemon zest, juice, sugar, and egg yolks, thickened over gentle heat.

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

  1. Pare the lemons very thin and place them in water.

  2. Squeeze the juice onto the sugar.

  3. Heat the egg yolks well.

Make the custard

  1. Add the lemon peels and juice, and beat together.

  2. Strain through a flannel into a saucepan.

  3. Set over gentle heat and stir until thick and hot, but not boiling.

Serve

  1. Pour 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
Coagulate as they heat, thickening the custard and giving it a rich, set texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the sharpness of the lemon juice.
Lemons
Juice adds acidity and tang, while the thinly pared peel adds aromatic lemon oils.

The step that matters

Stir over gentle heat until thick but not boiling. Egg yolk proteins set as they warm, thickening the custard. If it gets too hot or boils, the proteins tighten and curdle, leaving a grainy texture instead of a smooth one.

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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