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Lemon Pudding

A baked lemon custard topped with browned meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

Make the pudding

  1. Cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Add the lemon juice, lemon rind, egg yolks, crushed Boston crackers, and milk.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake until set.

Top and serve

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff, then gradually add the powdered sugar.

  2. Spread the meringue over the pudding and brown it in the oven.

  3. Serve without sauce.

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set into a soft, sliceable texture.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form the stiff meringue topping that browns in the oven.
Boston crackers
Crushed into the mixture to thicken the pudding and give it body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet custard and balances its richness.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich, tender texture in the pudding.
Milk
Provides liquid that sets with the eggs into a creamy custard.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff, then add the powdered sugar gradually. Sugar added slowly to whites helps them form a stable foam that holds its shape and browns evenly. Adding it too fast or under-beating can leave a weeping, flat meringue.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, 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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