Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Plain Lemon Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Make the batter
Soak the bread crumbs and squeeze them as dry as possible.
In a bowl, combine the flour, suet, lemon rind, lemon juice, and sugar.
Beat the eggs and mix them with the other ingredients to form a stiff paste.
If the mixture is too dry, add a little milk.
Steam
Pour the mixture into a well-greased basin and steam for three hours.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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.
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Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together30,404 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
- Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
- Eggs
- Bind the dry ingredients into a paste and help set the pudding.
- Suet
- Adds fat, giving the pudding a rich, tender crumb.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
- Lemon rind
- Adds fragrant lemon aroma from the oils in the zest.
The step that matters
Beat the eggs and mix them with the other ingredients to form a stiff paste.. The beaten eggs bind the flour and crumbs into a cohesive paste. If the mixture is too dry, the pudding can turn crumbly, which is why the record allows a little milk.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, egg, bread, sugar):
- Raisinfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Figfits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, bread, 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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