Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓
Lemon Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Bake the pudding
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
In a bowl, combine milk, bread crumbs, 1 cup sugar, egg yolks, butter, and grated lemon rind.
Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake for 30 minutes.
Once baked, layer jelly on top.
Make and add the meringue
In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff, then gradually add 1 cup sugar and lemon juice.
Spread the meringue over the jelly and brown in the oven.
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 + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Milk + breadtop 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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Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together19,053 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Milk
- Provides the liquid that sets with the eggs into a soft, custardy base.
- Bread crumbs
- Soak up the milk and give the pudding its body.
- Egg yolks
- Thicken and enrich the custard so it sets as it bakes.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the pudding and the meringue, and helps the meringue hold its structure.
- Butter
- Adds richness and a tender, smooth texture.
- Lemon juice
- Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and helps stabilize the meringue.
The step that matters
Beat the egg whites until stiff, then add the sugar gradually. Sugar added slowly dissolves into the whites and stabilizes the foam, so the meringue holds its peaks and browns evenly instead of weeping or collapsing.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, bread, sugar, egg, butter):
- Vanillafits better
- Figfits better
- Peachfits about as well
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against milk, bread, sugar, egg, butter. 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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