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Dessert

Lemon Cream

A chilled dessert made from lemon juice, peels, sugar, milk, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Lemon Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lemons

  1. Squeeze the juice from the lemons.

  2. Cut the peels of two or one and a half lemons into small bits.

  3. Pour the lemon peels over the sugar and let it stand for at least two hours.

Freeze

  1. When ready to freeze, combine the lemon juice and sugar in the freezer and allow it to get thoroughly cold.

  2. Then add the milk and cream, mixing well.

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. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  3. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 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
Provide the juice and peel that give the cream its bright, acidic flavor and aroma.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the frozen dessert a smooth, creamy texture.
Milk
Adds moisture and body, softening the texture of the frozen mixture.
Sugar
Sweetens the dessert and draws oil from the lemon peel, and softens the freezing texture.

The step that matters

Chilling the lemon juice and sugar before adding the dairy. The mixture should be thoroughly cold before the milk and cream are added, so the dairy does not warm and separate or thin the base. Cold mixing also helps the cream set smoothly as it freezes.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, milk, 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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