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Dessert

Lemon Pudding

A baked lemon pudding made with bread crumbs, milk, eggs, butter, sugar, raisins, and topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding base

  1. Soak the bread crumbs in the milk until very soft.

  2. Stir the baking soda into the milk.

  3. Beat in the whipped egg yolks and creamed butter with sugar.

  4. Add the lemon zest and lemon juice, then beat for 2 minutes.

  5. Stir in the raisins and pour into a greased pudding dish.

Bake and top

  1. Bake until firm and beginning to brown.

  2. Prepare the meringue by whipping the egg whites with powdered sugar and lemon juice.

  3. Spread the meringue over the hot pudding and lightly color it in the oven.

  4. Sift sugar over the top and cool in the refrigerator until ready to serve.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

Bread crumbs
Soak to a very soft base that gives the pudding its body.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set firm when baked.
Egg whites
Whipped into the meringue, giving it airy volume and a light crown.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender texture to the pudding.
Baking soda
Lightens the pudding base so it rises slightly as it bakes.
Lemon juice
Adds bright acidity that balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Baking until firm and beginning to brown. Egg yolks set as they heat, so underbaking leaves the pudding loose, while overbaking makes it dry and tough. Watch for a firm centre and light browning before topping with meringue.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, egg, butter, sugar, raisin, 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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