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Lemon-cream, Made Without Cream

A lemon-flavored custard made with egg whites, yolks, sugar, and lemon juice, thickened by a double boiler.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Lemon-cream, Made Without Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the infusion

  1. Pour boiling water over the lemon rinds and sugar in a bowl and let sit for 1 hour.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the egg whites and yolks together until well combined.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and lemon juice to the lemon-sugar mixture and mix thoroughly.

  3. Strain the mixture into a deep jug.

  4. Place the jug in a pan of boiling water and stir continuously until thickened.

  5. Pour the mixture out and stir occasionally until nearly cold.

Chill and serve

  1. Transfer to glasses and refrigerate for at least 24 hours 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 + 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

Egg whites
Whisked eggs set into the mixture as it heats, giving the cream its thick, light body.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help the mixture thicken and set smoothly as it heats.
Lemon juice
Provides the sharp acidity that defines the flavour and helps thin the set custard.
Fine sugar
Sweetens the cream and draws flavour from the lemon rinds during the infusion.

The step that matters

Stirring over boiling water until thickened. Eggs thicken gently but can scramble if overheated, so constant stirring over moderate heat keeps the custard smooth rather than grainy.

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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