Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, 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
Grate the lemons and juice one of them.
Soak the soda crackers in cold water for 1 hour.
Assemble and bake
Combine the grated lemons, lemon juice, sugar, and soaked crackers.
Pour the mixture into a prepared pie crust.
Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.
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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Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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
- Soda crackers
- Soaked crackers swell and break down, thickening the filling into a soft, spoonable texture.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the filling and balances the sharp acidity of the lemon.
- Lemons
- Provide the main lemon flavour and acidity; the grated zest adds aromatic oils.
The step that matters
Baking until set. The filling thickens as it bakes and the starch and cracker structure firm up. Pulling it too early leaves a runny centre, while overbaking can make it dry or cause the surface to crack.
“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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