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Dessert

Delicious Pudding

A lemon pudding baked in a pie crust, made with butter, sugar, eggs, vinegar, lemon juice, and lemon flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,806 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Delicious 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.

Prepare

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

Make the filling

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the eggs, vinegar, lemon juice, and lemon flavoring, mixing well.

Bake

  1. Fill a baking dish with pie crust and pour the mixture into it.

  2. Bake until the center is solid.

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. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  2. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon 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

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving the filling a light, tender body.
Eggs
Set when baked, giving the pudding its structure and firm center.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps cream the butter to a light texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the lemon flavor and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Bake until the center is solid. Egg proteins set as they heat, so underbaking leaves a runny center while overbaking can make the custard curdle, weep, or turn rubbery.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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