Why it works: Milk and butter 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 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Make the custard
Wet the corn starch in a little milk.
Heat the remaining milk in a saucepan until it boils. Add the corn starch and boil for 5 minutes.
Add the butter. Remove from heat to cool.
Beat the egg yolks until light. Stir in the sugar, lemon juice, and grated rind. Mix thoroughly.
Gradually stir into the cooled corn starch mixture.
Bake and finish
Pour the mixture into a buttered pudding dish.
Bake at 300°F (150°C) for 30 minutes.
Beat the egg whites until stiff. Add 2 teaspoons of sugar.
Spread on top of the pudding. Brown the top nicely.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Corn + milktop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,955 recipes
Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
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Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,927 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,345 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
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Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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 thicken the custard and enrich it, while whites whipped into meringue give the top its light, airy structure.
- Corn starch
- Gelatinizes when boiled with the milk, thickening the pudding to a smooth, sliceable custard.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base of the custard, providing moisture and body.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the pudding and helps stabilize the beaten egg whites.
- Lemon juice
- Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sweetness.
The step that matters
Cool the cornstarch mixture before adding the eggs. Adding beaten yolks to a hot starch mixture can scramble them and leave lumps. Cooling first lets the yolks blend in smoothly, giving a silky custard.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, corn, milk, butter):
- Vanillafits better
- Coconutfits better
- Figfits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, corn, milk, butter. 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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