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Lemon Filling

A sweet lemon filling made with sugar, corn starch, butter, egg, lemon juice and rind, boiled and cooled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,927 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Filling

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil sugar, water, and butter together in a saucepan.

  2. Dissolve corn starch in the lemon juice and beat the egg yolk.

  3. Pour the boiling syrup over the lemon mixture and return to the saucepan.

  4. Bring to a boil again, then cool and spread.

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. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  2. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

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

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Corn starch
Thickens the lemon mixture into a smooth, spreadable filling as it heats.
Egg
Adds richness and helps set the filling as it cooks.
Lemon juice
Provides the sharp acidity that defines the filling's flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the acidity of the lemon.

The step that matters

Bring to a boil again. Corn starch only thickens fully when it reaches a boil, so the filling must be heated until it thickens. Stopping early leaves it thin, while overheating the egg can make it grainy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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