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Dessert

Lemon Roll

A sweet, lemon-flavored roll made by cooking sugar, flour, and egg mixture, then adding lemon juice, rind, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Roll

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Beat the egg until light, then add the cold water.

  2. Mix the sugar and flour together, then add to the egg mixture.

  3. Cook in a double boiler, stirring constantly, until thickened.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in lemon juice, grated rind, and butter.

Finish

  1. Cool the mixture before spreading it on the roll.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Adds richness and, when beaten and cooked, helps the filling thicken and set.
Flour
Thickens the filling as it cooks, giving it a spreadable body.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the sharpness of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Provides the sour, bright lemon flavour that defines the filling.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rich mouthfeel in the finished filling.

The step that matters

Cook in a double boiler, stirring constantly, until thickened. Gentle indirect heat and constant stirring keep the egg from scrambling and the flour starch from lumping, so the filling thickens smoothly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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