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Lemon Sauce for Puddings

A thickened lemon sauce made with corn starch, lemon juice, rind, butter, sugar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,927 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Sauce for Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Boil the water and sugar for 5 minutes.

  2. Mix the corn starch with a little cold water.

  3. Add the corn starch mixture to the boiling water and sugar.

  4. Cook for about 10 minutes.

  5. Stir in the lemon juice, grated lemon rind, and butter until the butter melts.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately, adding more water if the sauce is too thick.

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. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  2. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Corn starch
Thickens the sauce as it heats in the liquid.
Lemon juice
Adds tartness that brightens the sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and balances the lemon's sharpness.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy finish.
Lemon rind
Adds lemon aroma from the oils in the peel.

The step that matters

Add the corn starch mixture to the boiling water and sugar. Starch mixed with cold water disperses evenly when stirred into hot liquid, which helps prevent lumps. The granules swell and thicken the sauce as it heats, so the sauce needs to cook for the full time to thicken properly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, butter, 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.

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