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Dessert

Lemon Pudding

A baked lemon pudding made with flour, eggs, sugar, butter, lard, and lemon rind, topped with a boiling sugar‑lemon mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

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

  2. In a bowl, mix flour, baking powder, sugar, lard, and salt.

  3. Add enough water to form a soft dough.

  4. Press the dough into the bottom of a greased large baking dish.

Make the lemon mixture

  1. In another bowl, beat the eggs slightly, then add sugar, lemon juice, butter, and grated lemon rind.

  2. Stir in the boiling water and bring the mixture to a boil.

Bake

  1. Pour the boiling mixture over the dough in the baking dish.

  2. Bake for 45 minutes until set.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the dough base that holds the pudding.
Eggs
Coagulate during baking to help the lemon layer set firm.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the tartness of the lemon.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother texture in the lemon layer.
Lard
Adds fat to the dough, keeping it tender rather than tough.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough, helping it rise and lighten as it bakes.

The step that matters

Bake for 45 minutes until set. Eggs thicken as their proteins coagulate with heat. Stopping too early leaves the lemon layer loose and runny, while baking too long can make it curdle and weep.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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