1,540 easy and fully explained recipes, with +66K photos and 78 videos

This site uses only a few technical cookies necessary for its operation. By continuing to browse, you accept their use.
To find out more...

Lemon in recipes

Let's take a look at the lemon, yellow or green, which is used in a whole host of recipes, both sweet and savoury. It brings both its taste, and the small acidity that makes its charm. Mind you, I'm not talking about lemon used as an anti-oxidant that prevents it from turning black, or to just spice up the taste of a dish, but as an ingredient in a recipe, like "something with lemon".

16 K 5/5 (14 reviews)

Last modified on: October 23^th 2017

For this post: Comment Follow Ask me a question Send to a friend

Lemon in recipes

In many of these recipes, you very often have two options: zest, or juice, meaning that you use one or the other in the recipe depending on the "tone" you want to give it. Let's say, to simplify things a bit, that when you want the tangy side of the lemon, you use the juice.

hand-pressed lemon

And when you want the lemony but more neutral tone, you use the zest.

lemon zest

Well... in principle it makes sense, but in reality it's not really a good practice, because lemon flavours are both complex and at the same time complementary. In fact, you should not limit yourself to one or the other, but try to combine both, both sweet and savoury.

Let's take a savoury example: lemon chicken. There are 36 ways to make it of course, but do you know the one where you simply pan-fry chicken fillets in a little clarified butter and lemon zest, then drizzle lemon juice over them at the end to finish them off by gently caramelising? The mix of the two, zest and juice, will give a very marked "lemon" tone to your chicken, and a great taste!

And a sweet example: the lemon tart. Here too, there are a large number of recipes, personally I am an absolute fan of the sanded pastry + lemon custard, and for the custard, you need to infuse the milk with the zest, and add lemon juice to the custard as soon as it's done cooking. You will also have a very, very marked "lemon" identity, which will have a small effect when tasting.

In summary: In a recipe that uses lemon, always try to use zest and juice.

Lasts posts

Butter vs. grease

We often read in a recipe where a pastry is put into a mould that, just before pouring, the mould should be buttered or greased. But what's the difference between these 2 terms?
December 1^st 20251,0675

Getting out of the fridge early

Very often when you're cooking, you need to take food or preparations out of the fridge, to use them in the recipe in progress. There's nothing tricky about this: you just take them out of the fridge and use them, usually immediately, in the recipe. But is this really a good method?
November 24^th 20251,1585

Who's making the croissants?

When you look at a bakery from the outside, you naturally think that in the bakery, the bakers make the bread, and in the laboratory, the pastry chefs make the cakes. It's very often like that, with each of these professions having quite different ways of working, but sometimes there's also one...
November 23^th 20251,053

Oven height

When we put a dish or cake in the oven, we naturally tend to put it on the middle shelf, and that's what we usually do. But in some cases, this position and height can be a little tricky, so let's find out why.
October 8^th 20252,8485

The importance of sieving

In recipes that use a fine powder (flour, powdered sugar, etc.), you'll often see the advice to sift before using it. To sift is to pass the powder in question through a sieve (a very fine strainer) before incorporating it into your recipe. It's often advice, but is it really useful?
September 3^rd 20257,5903

See all posts Random post RSS feeds

Other pages you may also like

A few tips for effective kneading at home

When you have to knead dough for bread or some other recipe, you may well use a food processor or the type of machine known as a stand mixer. The best-known brands are Kenwood and KitchenAid. They are useful tools, but here are a few tips to help you get the best out of them.
June 23^th 2021284 K 23.8

Cleaning endives

If you buy your endives elsewhere than in supermarkets, and in this case the best is of course from a market gardener, he or she is the one who planted and harvested them, in this case you will have endives full of earth or sand, depending on where they were grown, which is normal and reassuring, we...
March 24^th 202026 K4.6

How to properly roll out a pie crust?

Very often in pastry making, you have to roll out a pastry before using it for a pie or another dessert. At home, of course, you get out your rolling pin and simply roll it out. Is there a way to get an evenly rolled out dough? That's what we will see in this article.
May 10^th 202310 K4.9

The (small) miracle of béchamel sauce

Making a béchamel sauce is going to confront you with a little miracle that happens every time: You pour milk over a roux, it's very liquid, you stir over a low heat, and then all of a sudden, miracle, the sauce sets, it thickens, you've got your béchamel. Let's see what happened.
August 27^th 20248,6224

Devising a recipe

A question I'm often asked is: how do you come up with your recipes? How do you perfect them? This is something I've already mentioned on this page, but I'll take this opportunity to go into a bit more detail.
October 15^th 201218 K4.4