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Dessert

Corn Starch Lemon Pudding

A lemon pudding thickened with corn starch, sweetened with sugar, and set in cups.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Corn Starch Lemon Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grate the rind of the lemons and combine the juice, rind, sugar, and corn starch in a bowl.

  2. Stir in enough cold water to make a smooth mixture.

Make the pudding

  1. Heat the milk in a pot until boiling, then add the lemon mixture while stirring continuously until it thickens.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in the butter and eggs, continuing to stir to prevent burning.

Set and serve

  1. Once thickened, pour the mixture into small cups or molds that have been dipped in cold water.

  2. Let them sit aside for one hour to set before turning out.

  3. Serve with cream and sugar or any preferred sauce.

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. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Lemon + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  4. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Lemon + milktop 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

Corn starch
Thickens the mixture into a smooth, set custard as it heats with the milk.
Eggs
Add richness and help give the pudding body as they are stirred in.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the starch thickens into a creamy pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother, richer mouthfeel.
Lemons
Provide acidity and aroma from the juice and grated rind.

The step that matters

Stirring while the mixture thickens. Starch must be stirred constantly as it heats, or it can scorch on the pot bottom and form lumps. Stirring also keeps the egg and starch evenly dispersed so the pudding sets smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, corn, milk, butter, 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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