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Good Lemon Creams Made Without Cream

A lemon custard made by steeping lemon rinds in water, then adding lemon juice, eggs, and sugar, and cooking until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Good Lemon Creams Made Without Cream

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine the lemon rinds, sugar, and spring water in a bowl and let sit for 6 hours.

  2. Strain the mixture to remove the lemon rinds and add the strained lemon juice and beaten eggs.

  3. Stir the mixture continuously over gentle heat until it boils softly for 6 to 8 minutes.

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. 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

Eggs
Thicken the custard as they set during gentle heating, giving it a creamy body.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemons
Provide the lemon flavour and acidity; the rinds are steeped to draw out aroma.

The step that matters

Stir over gentle heat. Egg proteins set and can scramble if the mixture overheats or is left unstirred, leaving lumps. Constant stirring and gentle heat keep the custard smooth as it thickens.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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