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Dessert

Lemon Puddings

A dessert made from butter crackers, lemon pulp, molasses, and butter, baked in tart pans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Lemon Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lemons

  1. Pare away all the skin of the lemons and grate off half the yellow peel.

  2. Chop the lemon pulp very fine and remove the seeds.

Make the filling

  1. Stir the chopped pulp into the crushed crackers with the melted butter and salt.

  2. Gradually beat in the molasses, then add the grated lemon peel.

Bake and serve

  1. Line small tart pans with pie paste and fill them with the mixture.

  2. Bake until set and serve cold, but fresh.

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 + molassestop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,123 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Lemon + molassestop 36% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter crackers
Soaked and crushed crackers give the filling its body and bulk.
Lemons
Pulp and peel supply the sharp, aromatic citrus flavour.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and a dark, rich colour and flavour to the filling.
Melted butter
Adds fat, contributing richness and a softer texture to the filling.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, molasses. 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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