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Dessert

Cold Lemon Pudding

A chilled lemon pudding made with cornflour, eggs, lemon rind and sugar, topped with beaten egg whites and cherries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Cold Lemon Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Mix the cornflour with a little cold water.

  2. Pour boiling water over the mixture until it is clear, like making starch.

  3. Add the lemon juice, grated rind, sugar, and egg yolks.

  4. Pour into a crystal dish.

Finish and serve

  1. Once cold, top with the beaten egg whites mixed with a little sugar.

  2. Decorate with cherries or a little red jelly.

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. Egg + lemontop 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

Cornflour
Thickens the liquid into a clear, set custard as it cooks with the boiling water.
Eggs
Egg yolks enrich and thicken the pudding; beaten whites add a light, airy topping.
Lemon
Juice and rind supply sharp acidity and fragrant citrus aroma that balance the sweetness.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and the meringue-style topping.

The step that matters

Pour boiling water over the cornflour until it is clear. Cornflour only thickens fully when it is heated with enough hot liquid for its starch granules to swell and gelatinise. Stopping early leaves the mixture cloudy and runny, so it will not set properly.

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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