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Dessert

Lemon Pudding

A custard-like dessert made with milk, lemon, butter, sugar, eggs, and cracker crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Lemon 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 custard base

  1. Boil the milk in a double boiler.

  2. Pour the hot milk over the cracker crumbs and mix well.

  3. Return the mixture to the boiler and cook, stirring, until it thickens.

  4. Stir in the butter, sugar, salt, and lemon rind.

Finish and bake

  1. Beat the egg yolks and then the whites separately.

  2. Add the yolks to the pudding, then fold in the whites and lemon juice.

  3. Pour into a buttered dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks thicken and enrich the pudding, while whipped whites lighten its texture and help it rise.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that cooks into a creamy custard.
Cracker crumbs
Absorb the hot milk and give the pudding body and structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the lemon.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich, smooth texture and flavor.
Lemon juice
Provides acidity and bright lemon flavor.

The step that matters

Fold in the whites gently. Whipped egg whites trap air that lightens the pudding and helps it rise. Stirring them in vigorously knocks out that air, leaving the pudding dense.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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