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Lemon Cream Sauce, Hot

A hot sauce made from milk, flour, sugar, egg yolks, and lemon rind and juice.

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

Why it works: Milk and wheat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Lemon Cream Sauce, Hot

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan until it boils.

  2. Stir in the flour, sugar, and egg yolks until well combined.

  3. Remove from heat and add the grated lemon rind and juice.

  4. Stir well and serve hot in a sauce tureen.

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. Milk + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Wheat + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together585 recipes

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

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that dissolves the sugar and thins into a pourable sauce.
Wheat flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as their proteins set gently with heat, and add richness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright lemon flavour.
Lemon rind
Adds aroma from the fragrant oils in its skin.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg yolks into the hot milk. Egg yolk proteins set when overheated, so the sauce can turn grainy or curdle. Keep the heat moderate, stir constantly, and remove from heat as the method directs before adding the lemon.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, wheat, flour, 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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