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Dessert

Lemon Sauce

A thickened sauce made with corn starch, egg, butter, sugar, boiling water, and lemon juice and zest.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Lemon Sauce

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 Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, beat together the corn starch, egg, butter, and sugar until well mixed.

  2. Slowly pour in the boiling water while stirring steadily.

  3. Set the mixture over a pan of boiling water and stir until thickened, about 3 minutes.

  4. Taste to ensure the corn starch is fully cooked.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove from heat and add the juice and grated rind of the lemon.

  2. Serve hot.

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. 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 sauce as it heats, giving it body.
Egg
Adds richness and helps thicken and enrich the sauce as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rich mouthfeel.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and balances the lemon's acidity.
Lemon
Provides acidity and aroma from its juice and grated rind.

The step that matters

Taste to ensure the corn starch is fully cooked. Starch must be heated enough to swell and thicken fully; underheated starch leaves a raw, chalky, or thin sauce that does not reach its final texture.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, sugar, 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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