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Dessert

Amber Pudding

A lemon-based pudding made with sugar, eggs, corn starch, butter, and browned in the oven.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,927 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Amber Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard

  1. Combine butter, lemon rind, and lemon juice in a saucepan.

  2. Simmer gently.

  3. Beat the egg yolks with sugar and corn starch in a bowl.

  4. Add the egg mixture to the saucepan.

  5. Boil for one minute.

Top and brown

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

  2. Pour the beaten egg whites over the mixture in the saucepan.

  3. Place in a 400°F (200°C) oven to brown.

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 + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  2. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Egg + buttertop 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 the filling, while whites whip into a stiff meringue topping that browns.
Corn starch
Thickens the lemon mixture into a smooth, sliceable custard as it heats.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the egg whites hold stiff peaks.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded flavour to the lemon custard.
Lemon
Supplies the rind's aroma and the juice's acidity that brightens the sweet custard.

The step that matters

Adding the egg mixture to the saucepan. Egg yolks can scramble if they meet hot liquid too fast. Stirring the mixture in steadily and keeping the heat gentle lets the starch and yolks thicken it smoothly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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