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Drink

Lemon or Orange Cream

A beverage made by mixing lemon or lime juice, sugar, rind, and boiling cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream 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 or Orange Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lemon

  1. Squeeze the juice from the lemon or limes into a large bowl.

  2. Add sugar to the juice and stir until very sweet.

  3. Add the thinly pared rind to the bowl.

Combine with the cream

  1. Pour 3 pints of boiling cream into a teapot.

  2. Hold the teapot high and pour the cream over the lemon mixture while stirring continuously.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Lemon + creamtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,640 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

Lemon
Provides sharp acidity and bright citrus flavour from its juice.
Sugar
Sweetens the juice to balance its sharpness.
Cream
Adds richness, fat and a smooth, creamy body to the drink.
Lemon rind
Adds aromatic citrus oils for fragrance and extra flavour.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling cream. Lemon juice is acidic and can curdle hot cream if it meets it in one spot. Pouring from a height while stirring continuously spreads the cream through the juice quickly, so the mixture stays evenly blended.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream. 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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