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Clear Lemon or Orange Cream

A clear citrus cream made by steeping grated lemons or oranges, boiling with sugar, and adding egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Clear Lemon or Orange Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Grate the lemons or oranges.

  2. Pour boiling water over the grated fruit and cover to steep.

  3. Cut and squeeze the fruit into the mixture.

Make the cream

  1. Strain the mixture and boil it with the sugar.

  2. Gradually mix in the egg whites to avoid curdling.

  3. Heat the mixture on a clear fire, stirring one way until scalding hot.

Serve

  1. Pour into glasses.

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

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

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

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

  3. 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

Lemons or oranges
Provide the acidity and aroma that flavour the cream.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and body to the cream.
Egg whites
Thicken and set the cream as they heat, giving it structure.

The step that matters

Gradually mix in the egg whites. Egg white proteins can curdle or scramble when they meet hot, acidic liquid. Adding them slowly while the mixture is still moving spreads the heat evenly, so they blend smoothly and thicken the cream instead of clumping.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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