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Dessert

Lemon Pudding

A lemon pudding made with Naples biscuits, butter, nutmeg, eggs, milk or cream, and optional brandy, baked with puff pastry edges.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Lemon Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the lemons and custard base

  1. Boil the peeled lemons until soft, then rub them through a fine sieve to preserve the pulp.

  2. Boil a stick of cinnamon in milk or cream, then pour it over the Naples biscuits, butter, and nutmeg.

Make the filling

  1. Once cooled, add the lemon pulp and beaten eggs to the mixture, then mix well and sweeten to taste.

  2. If desired, add some brandy.

  3. Prepare a puff pastry and edge a dish with it, then pour in the lemon mixture.

Bake

  1. Decorate the top with strips of pastry and bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) 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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Biscuit + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together368 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

  3. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the filling into a soft, sliceable custard when baked.
Lemons
Provide the sharp citrus flavour and bulk of the pulp in the filling.
Naples biscuits
Soak up the hot milk or cream to give the pudding body and structure.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and a smoother, softer mouthfeel to the filling.
Milk or cream
Supplies liquid that softens the biscuits and helps form the custard.

The step that matters

Bake until just set. Eggs coagulate as they heat, so overbaking turns the custard grainy and watery as it separates. Remove it once the centre barely wobbles, as it will firm further while cooling.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against biscuit, butter, nutmeg, egg, milk, cinnamon, 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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