Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Lemon Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Chop the peel of 3 lemons finely.
Mix the lemon peel with flour, fat, and brown sugar.
Cook and serve
Boil the mixture for 4 hours.
Mix the lemon juice with sugar and water, and boil.
Serve the lemon sauce separately in a sauce tureen.
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.
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,227 recipes
Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
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Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together30,404 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together98,233 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
- All-purpose flour
- Forms the body of the pudding, giving it structure as it cooks.
- Fat (butter or shortening)
- Adds richness and tenderness to the pudding's texture.
- Brown sugar
- Adds sweetness and a deeper, molasses-like flavor.
- Lemon juice
- Provides the sharp acidity that defines the lemon sauce.
The step that matters
Boil the mixture for 4 hours. A long, steady boil cooks the flour and fat fully into a set pudding. Too little time leaves it doughy, and boiling too hard can make the texture uneven, so keep the water at a gentle simmer and check the water level throughout.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, sugar):
- Raisinfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Figfits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, 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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