Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Pudding

A baked lemon pudding made with matzo, milk, eggs, sugar, butter, and lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Lemon Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the pudding

  1. Roll the matzos finely and mix with the milk.

  2. In a bowl, combine the egg yolks, ¾ cup sugar, butter, and grated lemon rind.

  3. Add the matzo mixture to the bowl and mix well.

  4. Bake slowly at 300°F (150°C).

Top with meringue

  1. For the meringue, beat the egg whites with lemon juice and 1 cup sugar until stiff.

  2. Spread the meringue on the pudding after baking and return to the oven to brown.

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

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

  2. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 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

Matzos
Form the body of the pudding as they soak up the milk and soften.
Eggs
Set the custard as the yolks thicken and the whites whip into a stiff meringue.
Milk
Provides the liquid that softens the matzos and gives the pudding a creamy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the meringue whip to a stable, glossy structure.
Lemon
Adds aroma and acidity from the rind and juice, brightening the sweetness.

The step that matters

Spread the meringue on the pudding after baking and return to the oven to brown.. Egg white meringue needs to be spread fully to the edges so it seals and bakes evenly. Browning it briefly in the oven sets the surface while the custard underneath stays tender.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar, 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes