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Lemon Cream Pudding

A baked lemon pudding with a sweet topping and lemon sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Lemon Cream Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the base

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

  2. Rub the butter into the sugar and beat with the egg yolks until creamy.

  3. Soak the bread crumbs in the milk. Add the soaked bread crumbs to the mixture.

  4. Transfer the mixture to a buttered dish.

Make the topping

  1. Bake for 1.5 hours in a water bath.

  2. For the topping, mix 4 cups sugar, ½ cup butter, 1 egg, lemon juice, and rind, and ¾ cup boiling water.

  3. Dissolve the corn starch in a little water. Add the dissolved corn starch to the mixture and cook until thickened.

  4. Beat the egg whites with a little sugar. Spread the beaten egg whites as a meringue on top, browning slightly.

Make the lemon sauce

  1. For the lemon sauce, beat the yolks and whites of 3 eggs separately.

  2. Boil 1 cup sugar and ½ cup water for 15 minutes. Pour the hot sugar syrup over the beaten yolks while stirring.

  3. Add the beaten whites and the juice of 1 small lemon before serving.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Lemon + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 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
Egg yolks enrich and set the custard, while whites form the meringue that browns on top.
Bread crumbs
Soaked in milk, they add body and a soft, pudding-like crumb to the base.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the base and the topping.
Corn starch
Thickens the topping mixture as it cooks, giving it a smooth, spoonable body.
Milk
Provides moisture and softness to the bread crumb base as it bakes.
Lemon
Adds acidity and bright lemon flavour to the topping and sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the topping until thickened. Cornstarch must be fully heated in liquid to gelatinize and thicken. Stopping early leaves the topping thin, while overcooking can make it stiff or gummy.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, bread, egg, butter, milk, corn, sauce. 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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