Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Puddlng

A lemon custard made with lemon juice, sugar, water, eggs, cornstarch, milk, and egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,053 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Puddlng

Ingredients

Directions

Make the lemon custard

  1. In a saucepan, combine lemon juice, sugar, boiling water, egg yolk, cornstarch, and salt. Cook until thickened, then let cool.

Make the milk layer

  1. In another saucepan, mix milk, sugar, and cornstarch. Cook until thick.

  2. Remove from heat and fold in the beaten egg white.

  3. Pour the milk mixture over the cooled lemon custard.

Serve

  1. Serve cold.

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 + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 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

Cornstarch
Thickens the custard and milk mixture as it cooks, giving them body.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the lemon custard, adding richness and smoothness.
Egg white
Folded in whipped form to add lightness to the milk mixture.
Lemon juice
Provides the tart, acidic flavour that defines the pudding.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the top layer and adds moisture and richness.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and milk mixture and balances the lemon's acidity.

The step that matters

Cooking the lemon custard until thickened. Cornstarch thickens only when it reaches a boil and is stirred well, so undercooked starch leaves the custard thin. Egg yolk also needs gentle heat to thicken without scrambling.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

More lemon pudding recipes

Baked 36Boiled 25Cold 13Sauce 9Steamed 8Cornstarch 6 See all 470 →

You might also like

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