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Dessert

Lemon Custard

A custard made with lemon juice, eggs, sugar, white wine, water, and lemon peel, cooked over a water bath.

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

Why it works: Lemon and white wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,832 recipes. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

Lemon Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Strain the lemon juice through a sieve.

  2. Beat the eggs until light.

  3. Strain and add the eggs to the lemon juice.

  4. Mix in the sugar, white wine, water, and grated lemon peel.

Cook

  1. Pour the mixture into a small pot.

  2. Set the pot in a water bath.

  3. Stir until the mixture thickens.

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 + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  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. Sugar + white winetop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,586 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

Eggs
Coagulate as they heat, thickening the custard into a smooth, set texture.
Lemon juice
Provides acidity and bright flavor that balances the sweetness of the sugar.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the sharpness of the lemon juice.
White wine
Adds a subtle acidic and aromatic note to the custard.

The step that matters

Stir until the mixture thickens. Egg proteins set gradually as the mixture heats. Heating too fast or stopping too early can leave it thin, or cause the eggs to scramble and curdle, so stir steadily over gentle water-bath heat.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Applefits less well
  4. Plumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, white wine. 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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