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Dessert

Lime Pudding

A baked lime custard made with egg yolks, whites, sugar, lime rind, lime juice, salt, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Lime Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Beat the yolks of the eggs until thick and light colored.

  2. Whip the egg whites to a stiff froth, then gradually beat in the powdered sugar until stiff and glossy.

  3. Add the grated lime rind, lime juice, salt, and beaten yolks, then mix lightly.

  4. Sprinkle in the flour and mix in as lightly as possible.

Bake

  1. Pour into a baking dish and bake until a delicate brown.

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 + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Lime + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Sugar + limetop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,332 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Egg whites
Whipped to a stiff froth, they trap air and give the pudding its light, airy lift.
Egg yolks
Beaten until thick, they add richness and help set the pudding's custard-like body.
Powdered sugar
Beaten into the whites, it stabilizes the foam and adds sweetness.
Flour
Adds a small amount of structure so the batter holds its shape after baking.
Lime rind
Supplies aromatic lime oils that give the pudding its fresh flavor.

The step that matters

Folding in the flour. Mixing too vigorously deflates the whipped egg whites, which are what make the pudding light. Keeping the flour mixing gentle preserves the air bubbles so the pudding rises and stays tender.

Swap the lime

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Limethe original

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