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Dessert

Baked Lemon Pudding

A baked lemon pudding made with milk, bread crumbs, eggs, butter, sugar, and lemon zest, topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓

Baked Lemon Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the pudding base

  1. Heat the milk and pour it over the bread crumbs.

  2. Add the butter, cover, and let it soften.

  3. When cool, beat the sugar and egg yolks, then add to the mixture along with the grated lemon rind.

Bake and top

  1. Bake in a buttered dish at 350°F (175°C) until firm and slightly brown, about 30 to 45 minutes.

  2. For the meringue, whip the egg whites to a froth, then gradually add 4 tablespoons powdered sugar and the lemon juice.

  3. Spread the meringue over the pudding and return it to the oven to brown lightly.

  4. Serve warm with lemon sauce.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks enrich and set the custard, while whipped whites form the meringue topping.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the hot milk to form the body of the pudding.
Milk
Provides the liquid that softens the crumbs and gives the pudding its moist, tender texture.
Butter
Adds richness and softens the base, giving a tender crumb.
White sugar
Sweetens the base and helps stabilise the egg mixture.

The step that matters

Bake until firm and only slightly brown. Egg proteins set as the pudding heats, so underbaking leaves it loose while overbaking makes it dry and tough. Check firmness near the lower end of the time range before adding the meringue.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, bread, egg, butter, 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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