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Dessert

Leamington Pudding

A light, lemon-flavored custard pudding baked in molds and served with jam layers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Leamington Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter until creamy.

  2. Mix in the flour and sugar that has been rubbed with lemon zest.

  3. Add a tiny pinch of salt and the cream.

  4. Whisk the egg yolks and egg whites separately, then fold the whites into the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Butter three round pudding molds of different sizes.

  2. Pour the mixture into the molds and bake at 400°F (200°C) for one hour.

  3. Serve the puddings stacked, with jam between each layer.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Creamed butter gives the pudding richness and a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and set the custard, while whipped whites add lightness and rise.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps brown the surface of the pudding.
Cream
Adds moisture and fat, giving a softer, richer texture.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped egg whites. Egg whites hold air when whisked, and overmixing when folding them in knocks that air out, leaving a denser pudding instead of a light one.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, sugar, cream, 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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