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Dessert

Minute Pudding

A lemon pudding with meringue topping and butter‑water sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Minute 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 the base

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

  2. Mix the lemon rind, lemon juice, and ground mixed spice in a bowl.

  3. Pour the mixture into a buttered pan and bake for 25 minutes.

Add the meringue

  1. In another bowl, beat the egg whites with fine sugar until frothy.

  2. Remove the pudding from the oven and add the meringue.

  3. Return to the oven until slightly colored.

Cook and shape the pudding

  1. Sift the flour, salt, and sugar into a bowl.

  2. Add the milk to the sifted flour, salt, and sugar.

  3. Boil the mixture in water for 5 minutes.

  4. Pour off the water.

  5. Wet cups with cold water.

  6. Turn the pudding into the cups.

Serve

  1. Serve with a sauce made of melted butter and water thickened with a little flour.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 whites
Whipped with sugar to form a foam that gives the meringue its light, airy structure.
Flour
Provides the structure of the pudding and thickens the sauce.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness to the pudding mixture.
Lemon rind
Contributes the bright aroma and flavour of lemon oils.
Fine sugar
Sweetens the meringue and helps stabilise the whipped egg whites.

The step that matters

Colour the meringue only lightly. Whipped egg white foam sets and dries when heated for too long, so the meringue should be returned to the oven only until it is slightly coloured to keep it soft and tender.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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