Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Cream

A chilled lemon custard made with egg whites, yolks, and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rinds

  1. Pare the lemons very thin, avoiding the white part.

  2. Soak the rinds in ½ cup of cold water for 12 hours.

Make the cream

  1. Add the juice of the lemons and another ½ cup of cold water.

  2. Beat the egg whites to a froth and mix with the egg yolks.

  3. Strain the lemon juice and water mixture into the eggs.

  4. Sweeten with powdered sugar and stir until thick.

  5. Remove from heat and stir until cold.

Serve

  1. Serve in glasses.

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. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

  3. Egg + sugartop 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

Egg whites
Whipped to a froth, they add lightness and an airy texture to the cream.
Egg yolks
They enrich the cream and help it thicken as it sets.
Lemons
Their juice gives sharp acidity, and the rind adds aroma.
Powdered white sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the sharp lemon acidity.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

More lemon cream recipes

Pie 54Sauce 18Pudding 17White 9Italian 8Cake 8 See all 189 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes