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Dessert

Lemon Pudding

A lemon pudding made by mixing clarified butter, sugar, lemon rind and juice, and egg yolks, then cooking over a water bath.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Lemon Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub the lumps of sugar on the rind of the lemon to extract the essence.

Make the curd

  1. Combine the butter, sugar, and lemon juice in a jar.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks and place the jar in a pan of cold water over heat.

  3. Stir constantly until the mixture simmers and thickens.

Use and store

  1. Use the mixture for pudding or cheesecakes, and store in a cool place if not used immediately.

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. Lemon + eggtop 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the mixture as they gently set with heat, giving body and richness.
Butter
Adds fat for smooth texture and a rich mouthfeel.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and helps balance the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon
Provides acidity and aroma from the juice and the oils in the rind.

The step that matters

Stir constantly over gentle heat. Egg yolks thicken as they heat but can scramble if the mixture gets too hot or is left unstirred. The cold water bath moderates the temperature, and constant stirring spreads heat evenly so the custard thickens smoothly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

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