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Dessert

Lemon Butter with Sweetmeats

A butter flavored with lemon zest, juice, and sweetmeats, made by simmering cream, almonds, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 Butter with Sweetmeats

Ingredients

Directions

Make the butter

  1. Combine boiling cream and pounded almonds in a pot.

  2. Add beaten egg whites to the mixture.

  3. Add orange flower water to the mixture.

  4. Sweeten the mixture to taste.

  5. Zest the lemon into the mixture.

  6. Add lemon juice to the mixture.

  7. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  8. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve.

  9. Beat the strained mixture until smooth.

Serve

  1. Serve the butter in a dish with sweetmeats or ratafia cakes around.

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

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

  2. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

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

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Cream + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Coagulate when heated, thickening the mixture and giving the butter its body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps the cream thicken as it heats.
Blanched almonds
Contribute fat and flavour, giving the butter a rich, smooth character once pounded fine.
Cream
Provides fat and richness, forming the body of the butter.

The step that matters

Bring the mixture to a boil. Egg whites must be heated enough to set and thicken the mixture, but overheating can curdle them. Watch closely and stir to keep the texture smooth.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Pistachiofits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits less well
  4. Walnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, egg, orange, sugar, lemon. 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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