Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓
Lemon Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Make the batter
In a basin, combine flour, sugar, bread crumbs, chopped suet, lemon juice, and grated lemon peel.
Add the eggs and enough milk to achieve a porridge-like consistency.
Cook and serve
Boil the mixture in a basin for 1 hour.
Serve with or without sauce.
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.
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Bread + milktop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together11,466 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
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Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
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Flour + milktop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together19,053 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
- Provides starch that thickens the mixture as it cooks and sets it into a soft body.
- Eggs
- Bind the mixture and help it set into a cohesive pudding as it cooks.
- Suet
- Adds fat that makes the pudding rich and moist during steaming.
- Bread crumbs
- Absorb liquid and add bulk, giving the pudding a tender, light crumb.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps balance the sharpness of the lemon.
- Lemon juice
- Adds acidity and bright flavour that cuts through the richness of the suet.
The step that matters
Keeping the mixture at porridge consistency. Too little milk leaves a dry, dense pudding because the starch and crumbs cannot hydrate fully, while too much makes it loose and unable to hold its shape during boiling.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, bread, egg, milk):
- Vanillafits better
- Raisinfits better
- Figfits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, bread, 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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