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Dessert

Lemon Pudding

A lemon-flavored pudding made with sponge cake, lemon juice, sugar, eggs, and baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,227 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Lemon Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the lemon base

  1. In a saucepan, combine white sugar, butter, juice and zest of lemons, and water. Cook until thick.

  2. Pour the lemon mixture over sliced sponge cake in a pan.

Top and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites with 8 tablespoons of white sugar until stiff peaks form.

  2. Spread the beaten egg whites over the pudding.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until the top is light brown.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

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 whites
Beaten into a foam that sets into a light, airy topping that browns in the oven.
Sponge cake
Forms the base layer and soaks up the lemon mixture for a moist, tender texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, silky texture in the lemon mixture.
White sugar
Sweetens the lemon mixture and helps the meringue topping brown.
Lemons
Juice and zest provide acidity and bright lemon aroma.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to stiff peaks. Whisking egg whites traps air in their proteins, creating a foam that holds its shape. If the whites are under-beaten, the topping will be flat and may slide off; grease or yolk in the bowl also stops them from foaming properly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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