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Dessert

Lemon Cream Pudding

A lemon-flavored custard made with egg yolks, sugar, lemon juice and rind, thickened and folded with beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Cream Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a bowl, beat together 4 tablespoons sugar, 4 egg yolks, juice and rind of 1 lemon, and 2 tablespoons hot water.

  2. Simmer the mixture on the back of the stove until it thickens.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in the beaten egg whites mixed with 2 tablespoons sugar until stiff.

Chill

  1. Chill 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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the mixture as they set during gentle simmering, giving the pudding its body.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they add airiness and lightness to the finished pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps stabilise the whipped egg whites.
Lemon juice and rind
Provide acidity and aroma that brighten the rich custard flavour.

The step that matters

Simmer until it thickens. Egg yolks thicken as their proteins set with heat, but overheating can curdle them. Gentle heat and stirring keep the mixture smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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