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Lemon Surprise

Iced lemon cream with meringues

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Why it works: Lemon and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and 43,327 recipes mention both. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

The recipe

Serves 10

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

  • For the Iced Lemon Cream
  • For the Meringues

Directions

Step-by-step directions aren't available for this recipe. See the full recipe at the source →

By bbcgoodfood. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Lemon + eggtop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together43,327 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together43,437 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together53,530 recipes

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

  4. Egg + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together122,252 recipes

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

  5. Egg + creamtop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together41,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Lemon and sugar share little aroma chemistry, yet 53,530 recipes mention both: they likely work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs