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Dessert

Boiled Lemon Cream

A custard made by boiling cream with lemon rind, sugar, and flour, then tempering with egg yolk and steaming.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar 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 ↓

Boiled Lemon Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream

  1. In a saucepan, boil the cream, lemon rind, sugar, and flour.

  2. While boiling, whip the egg yolk in a bowl.

  3. Pour the boiling mixture into the egg yolk, stirring constantly.

  4. Let the mixture cool.

Steam and set

  1. Butter a plain mold lightly and pour the cream mixture into it.

  2. Steam the mold for 1 hour and then let it cool completely.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Cream
Provides richness and fat, giving the set cream a smooth, creamy texture.
Egg yolk
Thickens the mixture and helps it set into a firm, sliceable cream when steamed.
Flour
Stabilizes the cream and helps it hold its shape when cooled and unmolded.
Lemon rind
Adds aromatic citrus oils that flavor the cream without adding much liquid.

The step that matters

Pour the boiling mixture into the egg yolk, stirring constantly. Adding hot cream to egg yolk too quickly can scramble the yolk. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly so the yolk thickens smoothly instead of curdling.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, flour, 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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