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Dessert

Another Way to Make Lemon Cream

A lemon custard made by steeping lemon peel, adding sugar, lemon juice, egg yolks, and egg whites, then heating until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Another Way to Make Lemon Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the infusion

  1. Steep the lemon peel in ½ cup of water for 12 hours.

  2. Strain the mixture and add ¼ pound of loaf sugar, juice of 2 lemons, and the well-beaten yolks of 3 eggs and whites of 2 eggs.

Cook and serve

  1. Stir constantly over the heat until thick.

  2. Serve in custard cups.

  3. Optionally, perfume with orange-flower water, ambergris, or musk.

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 + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + sugartop 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 + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

  5. 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

Eggs
Egg yolks and whites thicken the mixture into a set custard as they cook.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sugar.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon peel
Infused in water to carry lemon aroma into the custard.

The step that matters

Stir constantly over the heat until thick. Egg proteins set when heated, so constant stirring over gentle heat keeps the custard smooth and prevents the eggs from curdling or scrambling on the base of the pan.

Swap the orange

The recipe marks orange as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, sugar, egg):

  1. Orangethe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Raisinfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, 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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