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Dessert

Lemon Pudding

A lemon-flavored pudding topped with a browned meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sugar 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 ↓

Lemon Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Mix flour with cold water until smooth, then stir in boiling water and let thicken.

  2. Beat together egg yolks, sugar, lemon juice, and grated rind.

  3. Stir in the thickened mixture and pour into a pie plate lined with crust.

Bake and top

  1. Bake until just done.

  2. Beat egg whites until stiff, then gradually add powdered sugar.

  3. Spread meringue over the hot pudding and return to the oven for 2-3 minutes to brown slightly.

  4. Let cool before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Flour and egg 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 yolks
Enrich and thicken the custard base, giving it a rich, smooth set.
Egg whites
Whip into a stiff foam that forms the meringue topping and browns in the oven.
Flour
Thickens the boiling water into a paste that gives the filling body.
Lemon juice
Adds the sharp acidity that balances the sweetness of the filling.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves into the whipped whites to stabilise the meringue and sweeten it.

The step that matters

Beat egg whites until stiff, then gradually add powdered sugar.. Egg whites must be beaten to stiff peaks, and sugar added gradually, so the foam holds its shape and does not weep or collapse on top of the hot pudding.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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