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Dessert

Lemon Pudding, Cold

A chilled dessert made with milk, sugar, eggs, corn starch, butter, lemon juice, and zest.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Lemon Pudding, Cold

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. In a small bowl, wet the corn starch with a little milk.

  2. In a saucepan, bring the remaining milk to a boil, then stir in the corn starch mixture, stirring constantly for 5 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat, stir in the butter, and let it cool.

  4. Beat the egg yolks and sugar together, then mix them into the cooled milk mixture.

  5. Gradually stir in the lemon juice and grated rind until smooth.

Chill and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a well-buttered dish and refrigerate until cold.

  2. Serve with cream and sugar.

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. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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 mixture into a smooth, sliceable custard as it cooks.
Eggs
Egg yolks enrich the custard and add body and a smooth, creamy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright flavour that cuts through the richness of the milk and yolks.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the starch thickens into the pudding.

The step that matters

Stirring the cornstarch mixture into the boiling milk. Starch must be stirred constantly as it heats, or it clumps and thickens unevenly. Cornstarch thickens fully only once the mixture reaches a boil and is kept stirred, so lumps are avoided.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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