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Dessert

Coen Starch Lemon Pudding

A lemon pudding thickened with corn starch, set in cups, served with a sweet sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Coen Starch Lemon Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Grate the rind of the lemons and combine with their juice, sugar, and corn starch.

  2. Stir this mixture into enough cold water to make it smooth.

  3. Heat the milk in a pot until boiling.

  4. Add the lemon mixture, stirring constantly until thickened.

  5. Remove from heat.

  6. Stir in the butter and eggs, continuing to stir to prevent burning.

  7. Once thick, pour into small cups or molds that have been dipped in cold water.

  8. Let sit for one hour to set before turning out.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, blend 1 ounce of corn starch with a little cold milk until smooth.

  2. Pour in 1 pint of boiling milk and stir continuously.

  3. Beat the egg whites with sugar and brandy, then add to the sauce.

  4. Heat the sauce gently while stirring until thickened.

Serve

  1. Serve hot or 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Lemon + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Corn starch
Thickens the milk and lemon mixture into a smooth, set pudding.
Eggs
Add richness and help the pudding set as it is stirred and cooked.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the pudding and the sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and balances the tartness of the lemon.
Lemons
Provide the bright, acidic flavour and aroma from the rind and juice.

The step that matters

Stir constantly once the lemon mixture meets the hot milk. Cornstarch thickens as it heats and can scorch or form lumps on the base of the pot if left unstirred, so constant stirring keeps the pudding smooth and evenly thickened.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, corn, milk, butter, egg, sauce, brandy. 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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