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Dessert

Another Lemon Pudding

A lemon pudding made with water, butter, sugar, lemon juice, rind, and egg yolks, baked in a puff pastry shell.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,227 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Another Lemon Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the lemon custard

  1. Boil the water, butter, loaf sugar, lemon juice, and grated lemon rind together for 10 minutes.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks and stir continuously until thickened like custard.

  3. Remove from heat.

Bake and serve

  1. Prepare a half-baked shell of puff pastry.

  2. Pour the pudding mixture into the pastry shell.

  3. Bake for 30 minutes.

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 + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Thicken the lemon mixture into a custard as they set with gentle heat.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the custard.
Lemon juice
Provides the sharp acidity that defines the pudding's flavor.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the lemon's tartness.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg yolks into the hot mixture. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat, and if the mixture gets too hot or is not stirred constantly, the yolks can scramble and turn grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, 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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