Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon or Orange Pudding

A baked pudding made with butter, sugar, eggs, citrus juice and rind, topped with a beaten egg white icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Lemon or Orange 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.

Make the pudding

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  3. Beat the egg whites and yolks separately, reserving 3 egg whites for icing.

  4. Add the grated cracker and cream to the egg mixture and mix well.

  5. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake for 30 minutes.

Ice and brown

  1. For the icing, beat the reserved egg whites and sugar together, adding vinegar while beating.

  2. Spread the icing on the pudding immediately after baking and brown slightly in the oven.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and a tender crumb by carrying fat through the batter.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the creamed butter hold air for a lighter texture.
Eggs
Set during baking to give the pudding its structure.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness to the custard-like mixture.
Grated cracker
Absorbs liquid and gives the pudding body.
Orange or lemon juice and rind
Adds acidity and bright citrus aroma.

The step that matters

Spread the icing right after baking. The meringue-style icing is spread while the pudding is still hot so it can brown lightly in the oven. If the pudding cools first, the icing does not take on the same light browning and the top can turn out flatter and paler.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, cream, vinegar. 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

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesOrange GelatinOrange Gelatin100 recipesOrange SherbetOrange Sherbet73 recipes