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Dessert

Lemon Pudding

A steamed pudding made with lard, flour, bread crumbs, lemon rind, lemon juice, treacle, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30,404 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Preheat the steamer.

  2. In a bowl, mix the lard, flour, baking powder, and salt to form a pastry.

  3. Line a basin with the pastry.

  4. In another bowl, combine the bread crumbs, lemon rind, lemon juice, and treacle.

Assemble and steam

  1. Fill the lined basin with layers of the fruit mixture and pastry until full.

  2. Cover and steam for 2 hours.

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. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Bread + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,445 recipes

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

  3. Flour + breadtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,383 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and bread barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,383 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

Flour
Forms the pastry structure that holds the pudding together while it steams.
Lard
Adds fat to the pastry, making it short and tender rather than tough.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the treacle and lemon juice, giving the filling body and moisture.
Treacle
Adds sweetness and a deep, rich flavour to the filling.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet treacle and lemon rind.

The step that matters

Filling the basin in layers. Packing the fruit mixture and pastry evenly, without large gaps, keeps the pudding dense and prevents air pockets. Steam then cooks the layers through evenly, so the pudding holds its shape when turned out.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, bread):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, bread. 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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