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Lemon Cream Pudding

A lemon-flavored custard thickened with egg yolks and folded with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Cream Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Beat the yolks of the eggs with the sugar.

  2. Add the lemon juice, lemon rind, and hot water.

  3. Simmer the mixture until thickened, then remove from heat.

Add the egg whites

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites with the sugar until stiff.

  2. Gently fold the egg whites into the lemon mixture. Beat well after each addition.

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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the lemon mixture as they set with gentle heat, giving a custard body.
Egg whites
Whipped until stiff, they add air and a light, airy texture to the pudding.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright lemon flavor that balances the sweetness.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and helps the egg whites hold their stiff structure.

The step that matters

Simmer until thickened. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but if the mixture gets too hot or boils hard, the yolks can scramble and turn grainy. Keep the heat gentle and stir until it coats a spoon.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, 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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