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Dessert

Fairy Pudding

A lemon custard pudding made with cornflour, eggs, and sugar, served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Fairy Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Boil the water and lemon juice.

  2. Pour the boiling mixture over the cornflour and sugar.

  3. Boil for 3 minutes.

  4. Beat in the whipped egg whites and sifted sugar.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a mold.

  2. Serve cold with custard made from the egg yolks.

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 + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar 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

Lemon
Adds acidity and bright citrus flavour to the pudding.
Cornflour
Thickens the liquid so the pudding sets firm when cooled.
Eggs
Whites add lightness and airiness; yolks enrich the custard with richness and body.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and balances the lemon's sharpness.

The step that matters

Boil for 3 minutes after adding the cornflour mixture. Cornflour only thickens fully when the liquid reaches a boil and the starch granules swell and gel. Boiling for the full time ensures the pudding sets properly when cooled.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, 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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