Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Pudding

A pudding of lady fingers, cake pieces and a lemon and egg mixture, boiled in a lined mold set in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Lemon Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. On a mixing board, combine flour and butter, rubbing them together with your hands.

  2. Add salt and make a well in the center.

  3. Pour in cold water and knead into a light dough.

  4. Flour a rolling pin and roll the dough out very thinly.

Assemble and soak

  1. Line a mold with lady fingers, placing them upright against the sides.

  2. Break remaining lady fingers and add to the center along with crushed ratifias and stale cake pieces.

  3. In a bowl, beat sugar and egg yolks until light, then add milk and vanilla.

  4. Pour the mixture into the mold, allowing it to soak into the cake.

Steam and serve

  1. Cover the mold with greased kitchen paper.

  2. Place it in a saucepan with boiling water halfway up the sides.

  3. Boil for 1 hour and 20 minutes.

  4. Remove and let cool slightly before turning out onto a serving dish.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (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

Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the custard as they set, giving a smooth, rich texture.
Egg whites
Add lift and structure to the pudding as the proteins set with heat.
Flour
Provides structure for the dough that forms the base of the dish.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the dough.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the yolks lighten when beaten.
Lemons
Contribute acidity and aroma that balance the sweetness of the pudding.

The step that matters

Keep the water bath at the right level. Egg-based puddings set gently. Water that boils too vigorously or rises into the mold can make the custard rough, pitted, or watery, so the water should stay halfway up the sides.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, bread, sugar, cream, 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.

More lemon pudding recipes

Baked 36Boiled 25Cold 13Sauce 9Steamed 8Cornstarch 6 See all 470 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes