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Lemon Cream, Made Without Cream

A chilled lemon dessert made by steeping lemon rinds in boiling water, mixing with sugar and eggs, and thickening over a water bath.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Lemon Cream, Made Without Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the infusion

  1. Pour boiling water over the thin rinds of the lemons and sugar in a bowl. Let sit for 1 hour.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the egg whites and yolks together, then add the lemon juice and mix well.

  2. Combine the lemon mixture with the sugar and water mixture, then strain into a deep jug.

  3. Place the jug in a pan of boiling water and stir continuously until thickened.

Cool and chill

  1. Pour into glasses and stir occasionally until nearly cold.

  2. Refrigerate for at least 24 hours before serving.

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

Egg whites
Whisked eggs thicken the lemon mixture as they heat and set into a soft custard.
Egg yolks
Add richness and body, helping the mixture thicken smoothly when heated.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream and balances the sharpness of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Provides the sharp acidity that defines the flavour of the lemon cream.

The step that matters

Stirring over boiling water until thickened. Egg proteins set at moderate heat, so the mixture must be stirred constantly to thicken evenly. Overheating or leaving it unstirred can scramble the eggs into lumps.

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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