Why it works: Lemon and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,227 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓
Lemon Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Make the lemon mixture
In a saucepan, combine lemon juice, butter, sugar, and cold water.
Add egg yolks and cook over medium heat until thickened.
Assemble and top
Split each sponge cake into 4 pieces and place in a pudding dish.
Pour the hot lemon mixture over the sponge cake pieces.
Beat the egg whites with sugar until stiff peaks form.
Spread the beaten egg whites over the pudding and brown slightly in the oven.
Serve cold.
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.
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Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,227 recipes
Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
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Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together98,233 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Egg yolks
- Thicken the lemon mixture as they cook and set it into a custard.
- Egg whites
- Whipped with sugar to form a stiff meringue that browns on top.
- Sponge cakes
- Soak up the hot lemon mixture and form the base of the pudding.
- Butter
- Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the lemon mixture.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the lemon mixture and helps stabilise the whipped meringue.
The step that matters
Cooking the lemon mixture after adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently, but if the mixture gets too hot they can scramble and turn grainy. Stir constantly over medium heat and stop as soon as it thickens.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, egg):
- Vanillafits better
- Lemonthe original
- Raisinfits about as well
- Figfits about as well
Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, 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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