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Dessert

The Dinner Question

A boiled custard made from milk, eggs, sugar, candied lemon, citron, spices, and salt, cooked slowly in a cloth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,053 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

The Dinner Question

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Beat the eggs and spices together.

  2. Gradually mix in the milk.

  3. Add the sugar, candied lemon, and citron.

Prepare the cloth

  1. Dip a clean linen cloth into boiling water and place it in a sieve.

  2. Lightly flour the cloth and tie it up tightly.

Boil the pudding

  1. Place the cloth in a saucepan with 6 quarts of boiling water.

  2. Keep a kettle of boiling water nearby to refill the pot as needed.

  3. Ensure it boils for at least 6 hours.

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

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

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

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

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 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

Eggs
Set during boiling to give the pudding its firm, sliceable structure.
Milk
Provides moisture and a soft, tender texture as the mixture cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the salt and spices.
Candied lemon
Contributes bright citrus aroma and chewy pieces of flavour throughout the pudding.
Citron
Adds a fragrant, candied citrus flavour and chewy texture.

The step that matters

Keep the pot boiling for the full time. The pudding cooks by steady steam and hot water around the cloth. If the water stops boiling or drops below the cloth, heat falls off and the pudding cooks unevenly, so the kettle must be used to keep the water level and boil constant.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, 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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