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Dessert

Lemon Pudding

A lemon custard pudding baked in a crust, finished with whipped powdered sugar icing.

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 ↓

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.

Make the custard

  1. Grate the rind and press out the juice of the lemons.

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks until very light.

  3. Mix the lemon juice and zest with the beaten yolks.

  4. Dissolve the corn starch in the milk.

  5. Add the dissolved corn starch to the mixture.

  6. Sweeten to taste.

  7. Mix well.

Bake and top

  1. Prepare a crust.

  2. Pour the custard into the crust.

  3. Bake until thick at 350°F (175°C).

  4. Whip the egg whites until stiff.

  5. Gradually add powdered sugar to the whipped egg whites.

  6. Spread the icing over the pudding.

  7. Brown slightly.

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 + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Lemon + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  4. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness and colour to the pudding.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk and lemon mixture so the custard sets firm when baked.
Whole milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and adds richness and softness.
Lemons
Provide the tart lemon flavour from both juice and zest.
Egg whites
Whipped and sweetened to form a stiff, airy topping that browns lightly.

The step that matters

Bake until thick. Cornstarch thickens only when heated enough to gelatinize, and eggs set as they cook. Underbaking leaves the custard runny, while overbaking can make it weep or curdle, so check for a firm set.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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