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A Welsh Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with butter, eggs, sugar, lemon zest, and lined with puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,227 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

A Welsh Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Melt the butter gently.

  2. Beat the melted butter with the egg yolks and egg whites.

  3. Mix in the sugar and lemon zest.

Line and bake

  1. Line a dish with puff pastry.

  2. Pour the mixture into the lined dish and 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. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, giving the filling its structure and body.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender, smooth texture to the filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the filling a fine, even texture.
Puff pastry
Forms a crisp, flaky base that holds the filling in the dish.
Lemon zest
Adds bright citrus aroma to the filling.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs set as they heat, so the filling should be removed once it is firm at the centre. Overbaking makes the eggs curdle and turn rubbery, while underbaking leaves it runny.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Figfits about as well

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