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Dessert

Queen of Puddings

A lemon pudding made with butter, egg whites, sugar, lemon juice, and topped with jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,227 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Queen of Puddings

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).

  2. Mix the grated lemon rind and softened butter until well combined.

Bake the base

  1. Bake the mixture until set.

  2. Spread a layer of jelly on the baked pudding.

Top and brown

  1. Whip the egg whites with sugar and lemon juice until stiff peaks form.

  2. Pour the whipped egg whites over the jelly layer.

  3. Return to the oven for 1 minute to lightly brown the top.

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. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Lemon and sugar 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

Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that gives the topping its light, airy structure.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender, fine texture to the base.
Sugar
Sweetens the topping and helps stabilize the whipped egg white foam.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright lemon flavor, and helps stabilize the foam.
Lemon rind
Adds concentrated lemon aroma to the base.

The step that matters

Whip the egg whites to stiff peaks. The whipped foam sets the light, airy texture of the topping. Under-whipped whites stay runny and may sink into the jelly, while over-whipped whites turn grainy and dry and lose their smoothness.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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