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Dessert

Gordale Lemon Pudding

A lemon pudding baked in a pie crust with sugar, butter, eggs, milk, wine or brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Gordale Lemon Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the filling

  1. Cream together the sugar and butter.

  2. Add the milk and mix well.

  3. Incorporate the beaten eggs, then add the lemon juice and rind.

  4. Stir in the wine or brandy.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and bake until set.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps give the creamed base its body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, creaming with sugar to trap air for a tender texture.
Eggs
Set when baked, giving the pudding its structure and custard-like firmness.
Lemons
Provide the acidity and aroma of the juice and rind that define the flavor.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the filling.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs set as their proteins coagulate with heat. Pulling the pie too early leaves a runny filling, while overbaking can make it curdled or dry.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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