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Dessert

A Lemon Pudding

A lemon pudding made with sponge cake, butter, milk, eggs, lemon peel, and candied peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

A Lemon Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA warm oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a warm oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the base

  1. Place the broken sponge cakes in a basin and add the butter and grated lemon peel.

  2. Boil the milk and pour it over the cake, then let it soak.

  3. In another basin, whisk together the eggs and egg yolks.

  4. Beat the soaked cake and milk mixture until smooth.

Mix and bake

  1. Add the eggs, lemon juice, sugar, and candied lemon peel, then mix everything well.

  2. Pour the mixture into a baking dish.

  3. Bake in a warm oven 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + lemontop 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. Butter + sugartop 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

Sponge cakes
Soak up the hot milk and form the bulk of the pudding's body.
Eggs
Set the custard when baked, giving the pudding its structure.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help the mixture set smoothly and softly.
Milk
Hydrates the cake and forms a custard that gives moisture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, smooth crumb.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs thicken as they heat, so underbaking leaves the pudding runny while overbaking can make it curdled and rubbery. Bake until the center is just set and no longer liquid.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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