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Dessert

Lemon Pudding

A baked lemon pudding with bread crumbs, egg yolks, butter, sugar, and a jelly and meringue topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 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. In a bowl, combine the milk, bread crumbs, sugar, egg yolks, butter, and grated lemon rind.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake for 30 minutes.

Top and finish

  1. Spread a layer of jelly on top.

  2. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then mix in 1 cup of sugar and the lemon juice.

  3. Spread the egg white mixture over the pudding and return it to the oven.

  4. Bake until the top is golden 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 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

Bread crumbs
Soak up the milk and form the soft body of the pudding.
Egg yolks
Enrich and set the custard base, giving it richness and body.
Egg whites
Whipped into a meringue that bakes into a light, golden topping.
Milk
Provides moisture and liquid that bakes into a soft, custard-like texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the meringue stay glossy and stable.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to stiff peaks. Egg whites need to be beaten until stiff so the meringue holds its shape and bakes into a light, airy topping. Underbeaten whites collapse and turn the topping dense or watery.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, bread, 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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