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Dessert

A Richer Lemon Pudding

A lemon pudding made with boiled lemon peel, sugar, butter, eggs, brandy, lemon juice, and sponge biscuit or bread crumbs, baked in puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and biscuit match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 697 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

A Richer Lemon Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil the peel of the lemon in two waters.

  2. Beat the boiled peel finely in a mortar.

  3. In a bowl, mix the lemon peel, sugar, butter, sponge biscuit or bread crumbs, and beaten eggs.

  4. Add brandy and lemon juice, mixing well.

Bake

  1. Line a dish with puff pastry and pour in the mixture.

  2. Bake until set.

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. Lemon + biscuittop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together697 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Butter + biscuittop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,009 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Sugar + biscuittop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard and add structure and richness to the filling.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich, tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the lemon's acidity.
Lemon peel
Provides concentrated lemon aroma and flavour from the oils in the peel.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs thicken as their proteins coagulate with heat. Pulling the pudding too early leaves it runny, while overbaking can make it curdled and dry.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, biscuit, egg, brandy. 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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