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Another Way to Make Lemon Custard

A custard made by combining lemon juice, sugar, and cream, then cooling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Another Way to Make Lemon Custard

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a deep dish, combine the juice of 4 lemons and 3 ounces of powdered sugar.

  2. In a saucepan, boil the grated peel of 1 lemon and 2 ounces of powdered sugar in 1 quart of cream.

  3. Pour the hot cream mixture over the lemon juice and sugar mixture.

  4. Let it cool; it will keep for 4 days.

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

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

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + creamtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,640 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

Lemon juice
Provides the sharp acidity that gives the custard its tangy flavour.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the custard a smooth, creamy body.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the sourness of the lemon juice.
Lemon peel
Adds aromatic lemon oils that deepen the citrus flavour.

The step that matters

Pour the hot cream mixture over the lemon juice and sugar mixture. Pouring the hot cream over the acidic lemon juice can cause it to curdle or separate, so the cream should be added gradually while stirring to keep the custard smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream. 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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