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Dessert

Lemon Sauce

A sweet lemon sauce made with boiling water, orange and lemon juice, sugar, butter, corn starch, and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Lemon Sauce

Why it works: Orange and lemon 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 Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the water, vinegar, butter, and sugar together.

  2. Beat the egg yolk well.

  3. Add 2 teaspoons of water and the lemon juice to the dissolved corn starch.

  4. Mix the corn starch mixture with the egg yolk.

  5. Pour the boiling liquid over the egg mixture.

  6. Return to the saucepan and bring to a boil while stirring constantly.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Orange + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together586 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Lemon + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  4. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolk
Thickens the sauce and adds richness when gently heated with the starch.
Corn starch
Thickens the liquid as it heats, giving the sauce body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the citrus and vinegar.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright citrus flavor.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother, richer mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Return to the saucepan and bring to a boil while stirring constantly.. Cornstarch needs to reach a boil to fully thicken, while constant stirring prevents lumps and keeps the egg yolk from scrambling on contact with hot spots.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Orangethe original
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Cherryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, lemon, butter, corn, 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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