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Dessert

Lemon Mould

A lemon custard made with arrowroot, sugar, eggs, and lemon juice, set in a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Arrowroot and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 553 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lemon Mould

Ingredients

Directions

Make the lemon base

  1. In a pan, combine the lemon zest and boiling water.

  2. Once boiling, mix in the moistened arrowroot.

  3. Add the sugar and lemon juice, then boil slowly for 10 minutes.

Thicken and set

  1. Pour the mixture over the beaten eggs and return to the pan. Stir over gentle heat.

  2. Place the pan in boiling water until thickened.

  3. Pour into a wetted mold. Let set before turning out.

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. Arrowroot + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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. Arrowroot + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,073 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

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

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

Arrowroot
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, glossy set once heated.
Eggs
Add richness and help the mixture set as it gently thickens.
Sugar
Sweetens the mould and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon juice
Provides the sharp, bright acidity that defines the flavour.

The step that matters

Stir the eggs in over gentle heat. Eggs scramble if they get too hot too fast. Adding the hot mixture slowly and stirring over gentle heat lets the eggs thicken the custard smoothly.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Asparagusfits about as well
  2. Arrowrootthe original
  3. Sweet potatofits about as well
  4. Shallotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, 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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