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Dessert

Lemon Custards

A chilled lemon custard made with egg yolks, boiling water, lemon rinds, sugar, wine, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Lemon Custards

Why it works: Wine and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,427 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Lemon Custards

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Beat the egg yolks until very light.

  2. Add the boiling water, grated lemon rinds, and sugar to the yolks.

  3. Stir the mixture over heat until it thickens.

  4. Add the wine and brandy, then heat until just scalded.

Chill and serve

  1. Pour into cups and refrigerate until cold.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Wine + brandytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  2. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Egg + brandytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

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

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

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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
Thicken the custard as they set when gently heated, giving it a rich, smooth body.
Lemon rinds
Add fragrant oils and bright, aromatic lemon flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the lemon.
Rich wine
Adds depth and body to the flavour of the custard.
Brandy
Adds aromatic warmth and a boozy depth of flavour.

The step that matters

Stir the mixture over heat until it thickens. Egg yolks thicken as their proteins coagulate with heat, but if the custard gets too hot it can curdle or scramble. Stir constantly and remove from heat as soon as it coats a spoon.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, wine, brandy. 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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