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Dessert

Plain Lemon Pudding

A lemon-flavored pudding made by rolling a flour and lard paste, filling with a lemon-sugar mixture, and boiling for two hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Plain Lemon Pudding

Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Plain Lemon Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Combine the flour and lard to form a smooth paste.

  2. Roll the paste to about ½ inch thick.

Prepare the filling

  1. Squeeze the lemon juice and strain it into a cup.

  2. Stir in 1 teaspoon of flour and enough sugar to make a stiff paste.

Assemble and boil

  1. Spread the lemon mixture over the rolled paste.

  2. Roll it up.

  3. Secure the ends.

  4. Tie it in a floured cloth.

  5. Boil the pudding for 2 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar 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

Flour
Forms the dough structure that holds the rolled pudding together while it boils.
Lard
Adds fat that makes the paste rich and tender rather than tough.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright lemon flavour that cuts the richness of the paste.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the sharp lemon juice.

The step that matters

Securing the ends and tying the cloth. A loose seal lets boiling water reach the lemon filling, making the pudding soggy and washing out its flavour. Tie the cloth firmly, leaving room for the pudding to swell slightly as it cooks.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar. 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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