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Dessert

Delicate Pudding

A chilled lemon custard made with egg whites, corn starch, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,927 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Delicate Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the lemon base

  1. Mix water, sugar, and salt in a saucepan and bring to a boil.

  2. In a small bowl, wet corn starch with a little cold water, then stir it into the boiling syrup.

  3. Cook for 10 minutes, stirring constantly.

Build the pudding

  1. Beat egg whites until stiff peaks form, then gradually whip in the hot mixture.

  2. Add lemon juice and a little grated lemon rind, mixing well.

  3. Pour into a mold that has been wet with cold water and refrigerate until ice cold.

Serve

  1. Serve with strawberries or other fruit, or with soft custard.

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. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  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. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + corntop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

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

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

Corn starch
Thickens the hot syrup into a sliceable, stable body as it cooks.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they give the pudding a light, airy structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright lemon flavor to the pudding.

The step that matters

Cooking the cornstarch syrup for 10 minutes while stirring constantly. Cornstarch only thickens fully when it gets hot enough to swell and gelatinize. Stopping early or leaving it unstirred can leave lumps or a thin base, which weakens the set once chilled.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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