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Dessert

Lemon Pudding

A baked lemon custard made with eggs, butter, sugar, corn starch, and boiling milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

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. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Beat the egg yolks well, then add the sugar, butter, grated lemon peel, and lemon juice.

  3. Pour in the boiling milk and mix well.

  4. Transfer the mixture to a well-buttered baking dish and bake until set, about 30 minutes.

Make the topping

  1. Whisk the egg whites to a solid froth, adding a little sugar.

Finish and serve

  1. Once the pudding is cold, drop spoonfuls of the egg white mixture over the top.

  2. Return to the oven for 2-3 minutes to set the topping.

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. Corn + milktop 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. Butter + corntop 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

Eggs
Yolks set the custard, and whites whipped into a foam form the topping.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps stabilise the whipped egg whites.
Milk
Provides the liquid base and moisture for the custard.
Corn-starch
Thickens the custard so it holds a soft, sliceable set.
Lemon
Adds acidity and bright lemon aroma from the juice and peel.

The step that matters

Baking the topping for only 2-3 minutes. Egg white foam sets quickly from heat. Extra time can toughen it, make it weep, or brown it too far, so check it closely.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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