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Dessert

Lemon Pudding

A baked lemon pudding topped with a light meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the pudding

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

  2. In a large bowl, combine bread crumbs, milk, 1 cup sugar, egg yolks, butter, and lemon rind, and mix well.

  3. Pour into a baking dish and bake until set but not watery, about 30-40 minutes.

Make the meringue and finish

  1. In another bowl, whip egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Gradually add remaining sugar and lemon juice, mixing until combined.

  3. Spread the meringue over the pudding and lightly brown 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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

Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and egg to form a soft, sliceable body for the pudding.
Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the pudding as they set during baking.
Egg whites
Whip into a stable foam that forms the light, airy meringue topping.
Milk
Provides liquid and richness that softens the crumbs and sets with the yolks.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps stabilize the whipped egg white meringue.

The step that matters

Bake the pudding until just set. Egg yolks set at moderate heat and become firm; overbaking can cause curdling and weeping, while underbaking leaves the pudding watery and loose.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, 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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