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Dessert

Plain Lemon Pudding

A boiled pudding made from flour, lard, lemon juice, flour, and moist sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Plain Lemon Pudding

Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Plain Lemon Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pastry

  1. Combine flour and lard to form a smooth paste.

  2. Roll out the paste to about 1 inch thick.

Make the filling

  1. Squeeze the lemon juice.

  2. Strain the lemon juice into a cup.

  3. Stir in the flour and enough moist sugar to make a stiff paste.

  4. Spread the lemon mixture over the paste.

Roll and boil

  1. Roll the mixture up.

  2. Secure the ends.

  3. Tie the pudding in a floured cloth.

  4. Boil for 2 hours.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

Flour
Forms the paste that holds the pudding together and absorbs moisture.
Lard or dripping
Adds fat that keeps the pastry tender and rich.
Lemon juice
Provides acidity and bright lemon flavour to the filling.
Moist sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps it set into a thick paste.

The step that matters

Tying the pudding in a floured cloth. The cloth must be tight and well floured so the pudding keeps its shape and does not absorb too much water while boiling. A loose or unfloured cloth can let water in and leave the pudding soggy or misshapen.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, 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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