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Dessert

Boston Lemon Pudding

A steamed pudding made with breadcrumbs, butter, powdered sugar, lime juice, and eggs, topped with a powdered sugar and lime sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lime and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,289 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Boston Lemon Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter and powdered sugar until creamy.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks and lime juice, and mix well.

  3. Alternately add the breadcrumbs, flour, and beaten egg whites.

  4. Fold in the baking powder last.

Steam and serve

  1. Butter a mold with a cylinder in the center and pour in the mixture.

  2. Cover with buttered paper and steam for 2 hours.

  3. Turn out onto a hot dish.

  4. For the sauce, cream together 1 cup powdered sugar, 3 tablespoons butter, juice of 2 limes, and the whipped egg white, adding a little nutmeg.

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. Lime + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,289 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Lime + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Eggs
Yolks enrich and whites, beaten, lighten the batter and help it set as it steams.
Breadcrumbs
Provide the bulk and body of the pudding, soaking up the butter and liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the batter and the sauce.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the pudding and sauce and helps the butter cream smoothly.
Lime juice
Adds acidity and bright citrus flavor that balances the sweetness.
Baking powder
Gives a little lift so the steamed pudding is lighter in texture.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Beaten whites trap air that lightens the batter. Stirring them in vigorously or over-mixing deflates the foam, leaving a denser pudding. Add them gently and alternately with the dry ingredients.

Swap the lime

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Limethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, lemon, flour, 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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