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 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Line a deep dish with pastry.
Make the custard
In a bowl, mix the lemon rind and pulp, sugar, sweet milk, melted butter, flour, and egg yolks until smooth.
Pour the custard mixture into the lined dish and bake for 30 minutes.
Top and brown
Beat the egg whites until frothy, sweeten to taste, and spread over the top of the pudding.
Return to the oven and let brown slightly.
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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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together19,053 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Butter and flour 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
- Eggs
- Yolks thicken the custard, while whipped whites form a light, set topping.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the custard and helps the whites hold their structure when beaten.
- Flour
- Adds body and helps the custard set into a firm, sliceable texture.
- Melted butter
- Adds fat for richness and a tender, smooth crumb in the custard.
- Sweet milk
- Provides liquid that bakes into the custard and gives it a soft texture.
- Lemon
- Rind and pulp supply the sharp citrus flavour and aroma that define the pudding.
The step that matters
Spreading and browning the meringue topping. Egg whites must be beaten until frothy and sweetened before spreading, and browning should be brief because whites over-bake quickly, becoming dry, tough, or weeping liquid.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, milk, egg, butter, flour):
- Vanillafits better
- Raisinfits better
- Figfits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, egg, butter, flour. 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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