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Dessert

Lemon Pudding, Boiled

A boiled pudding made with breadcrumbs, flour, suet, sugar, lemon juice and zest, egg yolks, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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, Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, mix breadcrumbs, flour, suet, and sugar.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks, lemon juice, and lemon zest.

  3. Gradually add milk until the mixture is stiff but well-moistened.

Steam and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture to a greased basin.

  2. Steam for 2.5 to 3 hours.

  3. Serve with cornflour sauce or melted butter.

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

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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

Breadcrumbs
Provide the bulk of the pudding and absorb moisture to hold its shape.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture together and add richness to the texture.
Lemon
Adds bright acidity and aroma from the juice and zest.
Flour
Adds body and helps the pudding hold its structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the lemon.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, egg, milk, 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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