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Dessert

Lemon Cream

A chilled lemon-flavored cream dessert made with lemon rind, juice, orange‑flower water, egg whites, yolks, and sugar.

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 ↓

Lemon Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream base

  1. Combine the cream and the yellow rind of the lemon in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Stir continuously until the mixture is warm, like new milk.

  3. Sweeten the pulp and juice of the lemons to balance their acidity.

  4. Add the sweetened lemon juice and orange-flower water to the warm cream.

Thicken and serve

  1. Beat the egg whites and yolks in a bowl.

  2. Mix the beaten egg whites and yolks into the cream mixture.

  3. Stir until the mixture begins to thicken.

  4. Remove the saucepan from heat.

  5. Strain the mixture into a dish or glasses.

  6. Let the strained mixture cool before serving.

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

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

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

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

  4. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

  5. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

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

Cream
Forms the rich body of the dessert and carries the flavour.
Egg yolks
Their proteins set on gentle heat, thickening the cream into a custard.
Egg whites
Add airiness and help the mixture set lightly as it heats.
Lemon juice
Provides the sharp acidity that gives the cream its bright flavour.

The step that matters

Stirring the eggs into the warm cream. If the heat is too high or the mixture is stirred too little, the egg proteins can curdle or scramble instead of thickening smoothly. Keep the heat moderate and stir constantly until it just begins to thicken.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, lemon, egg, sugar. 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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