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Dessert

Lemon Kiss Pudding

A lemon custard pudding baked in a pastry-lined dish and topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,053 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Kiss Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the filling

  1. Grate the lemons and combine the rinds and juice with the beaten yolks of the eggs, sugar, and boiled milk.

  2. Stir the mixture quickly and pour it into a baking dish lined with pastry.

Bake and top

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 30 minutes, until the crust is done.

  2. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth with 4 tablespoons of sugar and cover the pudding with this meringue.

  3. Brown the meringue delicately in the oven.

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 + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

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

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

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
Yolks thicken the custard, and whipped whites form the light meringue topping.
Lemons
Juice gives a sharp acidity, and the rind adds fragrant citrus aroma.
Milk
Provides moisture and a creamy body to the custard filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the meringue stay stiff and brown.

The step that matters

Brown the meringue delicately in the oven. Sugar in meringue browns quickly at oven heat, so it can scorch before the interior sets. Watching closely keeps the topping golden rather than burnt or weeping.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, 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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