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Dessert

Baked Lemon Pudding

A baked lemon custard made with lemon zest, sugar, cream, milk, cake crumbs, cinnamon, egg yolks, and folded egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Baked Lemon Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the flavouring

  1. Grate the rind of the lemons into a bowl with the sugar.

  2. Pound the cinnamon stick in a mortar until fine. Add the cinnamon to the sugar in the bowl.

Make the custard

  1. Mix in the cake crumbs until well combined.

  2. Juice the lemons and strain the juice into the bowl.

  3. Beat in the yolks of the eggs until smooth.

  4. Stir in the cream and milk with a wooden spoon.

  5. Whip the egg whites to stiff peaks and gently fold them into the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Line a pie dish with puff pastry.

  2. Pour the mixture into the pie dish.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until set and lightly browned.

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

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Yolks enrich and set the custard, while whipped whites lighten its texture.
Cake crumbs
Add body and absorb liquid, giving the pudding a softer, more substantial structure.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, making the custard smoother and more tender.
Milk
Provides liquid that sets with the eggs into a soft custard.
Lemons
Juice adds acidity and aroma that brighten the sweetness of the sugar.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the custard and, with the lemon rind, draws out its fragrant oils.

The step that matters

Baking until just set. Egg proteins set as the custard heats, so pulling it out too late can leave it curdled or dry, while too early leaves it runny in the centre.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, milk, cinnamon, 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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