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Dessert

Lemon Creams

A sweet lemon custard made with sugar, water, egg yolks, lemon juice and rind, finished with whipped egg whites and cinnamon.

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

Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Lemon Creams

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Melt the sugar in water over low heat.

  2. Beat the egg yolks well.

  3. Squeeze the lemon juice and scrape the rind into the sugar water.

  4. Mix well, then stir in the egg yolks continuously.

  5. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve.

Thicken and finish

  1. Place the jug in a saucepan of boiling water, stirring until it thickens like custard.

  2. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks and fold into the mixture until light.

  3. Pour into custard glasses and sprinkle with cinnamon.

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. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  4. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 yolks
Thicken the custard as they heat and set, giving it a rich, smooth body.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they lighten the custard with trapped air.
Lemon juice
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness of the sugar syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the sharpness of the lemon.

The step that matters

Stirring the yolks into the warm syrup. Egg yolks scramble if they meet too much heat too fast. Adding them while stirring constantly and heating gently over water lets them thicken smoothly into custard instead of curdling.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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