Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Cream

A lemon custard made with grated rind, juice, eggs, water, and sugar, served in glasses.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grate the rind of the lemons and squeeze the juice into a deep vessel.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and warm water, then strain the mixture.

  3. Stir in the grated lemon rind and place the vessel in a hot water bath.

Make the custard

  1. Stir until the mixture reaches the consistency of soft custard.

Serve

  1. Serve in 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.

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. Egg + sugartop 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
Set the custard into a soft, creamy structure as they cook.
Lemons
Provide the acidity and aroma that flavour the custard, with rind adding fragrant oils.
Warm water
Thins the egg mixture so it can be strained and cooks gently into a smooth custard.

The step that matters

Stir until soft custard. Eggs thicken as they heat, but overheating can curdle them into lumps. Gentle, constant stirring in the hot water bath keeps the custard smooth and evenly set.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, 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.

More lemon custard recipes

Pie 47Pudding 3 See all 178 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon Water IceLemon Water Ice55 recipes