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Dessert

Lemon Cream Pudding

A baked lemon pudding with a lemon cream topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Lemon Cream 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 pudding base

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Rub the butter into the sugar, then beat the mixture with the egg yolks until creamy.

  3. Add the bread crumbs soaked in milk and mix the mixture well.

  4. Pour the mixture into a buttered baking dish.

  5. Bake until set.

Make the lemon cream

  1. For the cream, combine 1 cup sugar, 1 teaspoon butter, 1 egg, lemon juice, and rind in a saucepan.

  2. Add boiling water and bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Stir in the cornstarch dissolved in water and cook until thickened.

Top and brown

  1. Beat the egg whites with a little sugar until stiff peaks form.

  2. Spread the stiff egg whites on top of the pudding.

  3. Brown the top under the broiler briefly before serving.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Enriches the custard base and helps it set when baked.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the milk to give the pudding body and a soft, tender crumb.
Milk
Provides liquid that the bread absorbs and that sets with the eggs.
Cornstarch
Thickens the lemon cream as it cooks into a smooth, glossy sauce.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks to form a light topping that browns under the broiler.

The step that matters

Cook the lemon cream until thickened. Cornstarch must be heated to a boil to swell and thicken fully; stopping early leaves the cream thin and runny.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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