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Dessert

New Pudding

A gelatin-based lemon pudding topped with a thickened custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,053 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

New Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gelatine

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water for 1 hour.

  2. Add boiling water and lemon juice, then sweeten to taste.

Whip and fold

  1. When the mixture is cold and begins to thicken, whip it until stiff.

  2. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

Make the custard and serve

  1. For the custard, combine egg yolks and milk in a saucepan and cook until thickened, then serve over the pudding.

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

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

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

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

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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

Gelatine
Sets the lemon liquid into a wobbly, sliceable structure as it cools.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiffness, they add lightness and airy volume to the pudding.
Egg yolks
Thicken the milk into a custard through gentle heat, adding richness.
Lemon juice
Provides tart acidity that balances the sugar and brightens the flavour.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped whites hold air, and folding gently keeps that air in the mixture. Stirring vigorously deflates the foam, leaving a dense pudding instead of a light one.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, milk. 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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