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Dessert

Another Wat to Ivcake White Lemon Cream

A chilled lemon cream made with lemon peel, heavy cream, egg yolks, egg whites, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar 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 ↓

Another Wat to Ivcake White Lemon Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse the cream

  1. Boil the thin peel of the lemons in the cream.

  2. Strain the mixture and thicken it with the beaten yolks of the eggs.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the beaten egg whites and sweeten with pounded loaf sugar.

  2. Stir until nearly cold and pour into glasses.

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. Cream + sugartop 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 + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 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

Heavy cream
Forms the rich, smooth body and carries the flavor of the dish.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream as they set gently with heat, giving a custard-like texture.
Egg whites
Add airy lightness to the mixture when beaten in.
Lemons
Their thin peel releases aromatic oils into the cream, giving lemon flavor.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the cream and balances the acidity of the lemon.

The step that matters

Thickening with the beaten yolks. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat as their proteins set. If the cream is too hot when they are added, or they are not stirred in well, the yolks can curdle into fine lumps instead of a smooth, thick cream.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Strawberryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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