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Hamburg Cream

A lemon custard made with egg yolks, sugar, vanilla, and folded with beaten egg whites.

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

Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Hamburg Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream

  1. Combine lemon rind, lemon juice, egg yolks, and sugar in a heatproof bowl.

  2. Place the bowl in a pan of boiling water and stir for 3 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat and fold in the beaten egg whites.

Chill and serve

  1. Chill and serve in custard 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.

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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

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

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 yolks
Thicken the mixture and enrich it as they gently cook over the water.
Egg whites
Add airiness and lightness when folded in, giving the cream a soft, fluffy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream and helps balance the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright citrus flavour that cuts through the richness of the yolks.

The step that matters

Stirring over boiling water. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but too much heat can scramble them. Stirring gently over simmering water, not direct heat, lets the mixture thicken smoothly without curdling.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Blueberryfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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