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Dessert

Fairy Pudding

A lemon custard pudding made with cornflour, sugar, egg whites, yolks, milk, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Fairy Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the lemon fluff

  1. Boil the water with sugar, lemon rind, and juice, then remove the lemon rind once boiling.

  2. Mix cornflour with a little water and stir it into the boiling mixture.

  3. Boil for 3 minutes and pour into a basin.

  4. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks and fold them into the mixture in the basin.

  5. Pour the mixture into a wet mold and set aside to cool.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, heat the milk until very hot.

  2. Mix cornflour with a little milk, then add the egg yolks and beat well.

  3. Stir the yolk mixture into the hot milk and keep stirring until it boils.

  4. Set aside to cool.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Lemon + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 whites
Beaten to stiff peaks, they trap air and give the pudding its light, fluffy set.
Cornflour
Starch that thickens the lemon mixture and the custard sauce as it heats.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce, adding richness and a smooth, custard-like texture.
Milk
Forms the base of the sauce, giving it creamy body and mild sweetness.
Lemon
Lemon rind and juice add aroma and sharp acidity to the sweet fluff.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Egg whites must be beaten to stiff peaks and folded gently into the warm mixture. Overmixing knocks out the trapped air, so the pudding will be dense rather than light and fluffy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, milk, vanilla. 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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