Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. 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.
Prepare the custard
Line a pudding dish with pie crust.
In a bowl, mix milk, egg yolks, flour or cornstarch, sugar, and lemon rind.
Cook the mixture over low heat until thickened, stirring constantly.
Remove from heat and stir in lemon juice.
Pour the custard into the lined dish.
Bake and serve
Beat egg whites with salt until stiff peaks form, then spread over the custard.
Bake at 350°F (175°C) until the top is browned.
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.
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together19,053 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together30,404 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 yolks
- Thicken the custard and add richness as they set with gentle heat.
- Egg whites
- Beaten to stiff peaks, they form a light topping that puffs and browns in the oven.
- Flour or cornstarch
- Starch that thickens the milk mixture when cooked over heat.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base of the custard and adds creaminess.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the custard and helps the topping brown.
The step that matters
Cook the custard over low heat, stirring constantly. Egg yolks can scramble if the custard gets too hot or is left unstirred. Constant stirring over low heat lets the starch thicken the mixture smoothly before the eggs curdle.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, flour, sugar):
- Vanillafits better
- Raisinfits better
- Figfits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, flour, 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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