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Dessert

Boiled Lemon Pudding

A sweet lemon pudding made by boiling water or milk with sugar, cornstarch, lemon juice and rind, then adding egg yolks and butter.

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

Boiled Lemon Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Bring 2½ cups of water or milk and 1 cup of sugar to a boil in an agate vessel.

  2. Dissolve 4 heaping teaspoons of cornstarch in ⅓ cup of water and stir into the boiling mixture.

  3. Boil for a few minutes, stirring constantly, then remove from heat.

  4. Add the juice and grated rind of 3 lemons, the beaten yolks of 3 eggs, and 1 teaspoon of butter.

  5. Fill small dishes with the mixture and let them stand until the pudding thickens and cools.

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

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

  3. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cornstarch
Thickens the liquid into a soft, sliceable pudding as it cooks and cools.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and add richness and body to the pudding.
Lemon juice and rind
Provide acidity and bright lemon aroma that balance the sweetness.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and balances the tartness of the lemon.

The step that matters

Stirring constantly while boiling. Cornstarch can settle and scorch on the bottom of the pan or form lumps if not stirred. Constant stirring keeps it dispersed so it thickens evenly once the starch gelatinizes at a boil.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

More lemon pudding recipes

Baked 36Boiled 25Cold 13Sauce 9Steamed 8Cornstarch 6 See all 470 →

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