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Dessert

Boiled Lemon Pudding

A sweet pudding made with bread crumbs, suet, flour, sugar, lemon, eggs, and milk, boiled in a basin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Boiled Lemon Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil a large saucepan full of water.

  2. Chop the suet finely after removing the skin.

  3. In a bowl, mix the flour and chopped suet, ensuring no lumps remain.

  4. Sift the bread crumbs into the bowl.

  5. Add the moist sugar.

  6. Grate the lemon rinds into the mixture.

  7. Squeeze the lemon juice into the mixture, avoiding the seeds.

  8. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs with the milk.

  9. Combine the egg mixture with the other ingredients.

Steam and serve

  1. Mix well.

  2. Butter a small pint basin.

  3. Pour the mixture into the basin.

  4. Cover with a cloth tied with string.

  5. Steam in the boiling water for about two hours.

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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

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

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Suet
Adds richness and a moist, tender crumb as it melts during steaming.
Bread crumbs
Provide body and bulk, giving the pudding its light, soft structure.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help set the pudding as it steams.
Flour
Adds structure, helping the pudding hold together when cooked.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps keep the pudding tender.
Lemons
Provide aroma and acidity from the rind and juice, brightening the flavour.

The step that matters

Steaming with the basin covered. The cloth must be tied securely and the water kept boiling so steam surrounds the basin evenly. Steam cooks the pudding gently and keeps it moist; if the water drops or steam escapes, the pudding can turn dry or unevenly set.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, flour, 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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