Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Pudding

A baked lemon pudding made with sugar, butter, lemon, eggs, crackers, milk, served with a lemon‑nutmeg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Chippewa Falls, Wis. Episcopal church. Ladies aid society. [from old catalog] · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Lemon Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat together one cupful of sugar and a piece of butter the size of a g' g.

  2. Add the juice and grated rind of one lemon, then two eggs and six small powdered crackers, and finally nearly a pint of milk.

  3. Combine one pint of sweet milk, five tablespoonfuls of flour, one tablespoonful of melted butter, and six eggs, leaving out the whites of three.

  4. Bake in buttered earthen cups half filled for twenty minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, combine one large cupful of sugar, one-half cupful of butter, the juice and half of the grated peel of one lemon, one small nutmeg, and three tablespoonfuls of boiling water.

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  3. Stir in the whipped light, the lemon, and the nutmeg.

  4. Beat for ten minutes.

  5. Add the boiling water spoonful at a time.

  6. Place the bowl on top of a teakettle kept boiling until the steam heats the sauce very hot but not boiling, stirring constantly.

Prepare the cups

  1. Do not wash your cups; wipe them with a coarse cloth and keep them for these puffs.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

857Calories
28 gProtein
27 gFat
125 gCarbs

Counts 7 of 8 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 7 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Lemonjuice of 1 lemon (48ml)12
Nutmeg1 tsp ground (2.2g)12
Waternot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Chippewa Falls, Wis. Episcopal church. Ladies aid society. [from old catalog]. 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. See the original page.

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 + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  4. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness and helps the sugar cream into a smooth base.
Flour (in the method)
Gives the batter body so the puffs hold their shape after baking.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and helps create a smooth, creamed texture in the sauce.
Milk
Supplies moisture that turns to steam and helps the batter rise and set.

The step that matters

Heating the sauce over the teakettle. Heat must be gentle and the sauce must be stirred constantly. If it boils or heats unevenly, the butter and eggs can separate or curdle, leaving a grainy, broken sauce.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Parsleyfits less well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, butter, lemon, 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes