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Dessert

Lemon Sponge or Pudding with Whipped Cream

A lemon-flavored gelatin-based sponge or pudding served with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Lemon Sponge or Pudding with Whipped Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gelatine

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water.

  2. Dissolve the gelatine over boiling water.

Make the lemon mixture

  1. Beat the egg yolks until thick and lemon-colored.

  2. Gradually add sugar and beat thoroughly.

  3. Mix in the dissolved gelatine with lemon juice and rind.

  4. Stir until it begins to thicken.

  5. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

Chill and serve

  1. Place in a mold and chill.

  2. Serve with sweetened and flavored whipped cream.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  3. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

Gelatine
Sets the mixture so it holds its shape when chilled.
Egg yolks
Add richness and body, and help make the mixture smooth and thick.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in, they add lightness and airy volume.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps stabilise the beaten yolks.
Lemon juice
Provides acidity and the main lemon flavour.

The step that matters

Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the whites. Stirring or deflating them makes the cake dense instead of light, and the mixture should be thickening but not yet set when the whites go in.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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