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Dessert

Hanover Pudding

A lemon pudding made with crumbed roll, sugar, butter, lemon juice, egg yolks, egg whites, baked over puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,227 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Hanover Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a cool oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Grate the crumb of a roll and finely grate the rind of half a lemon.

Make the filling

  1. Add sugar, butter, lemon juice, beaten egg yolks, and beaten egg whites.

  2. Set the mixture over low heat and stir until thickened.

Bake

  1. Pour into a flat dish lined with puff pastry.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) for 30 minutes.

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 + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

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

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

Eggs
Egg yolks and whites thicken the filling and help it set into a custard-like texture.
Butter
Adds richness and a soft, tender mouthfeel to the filling.
Fine sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps give it a smooth, glossy texture.
Roll crumb
Bulks up the filling and gives it body as it absorbs the liquid ingredients.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright flavour that balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Stirring over low heat until thickened. Egg proteins begin to set around 70°C, so gentle low heat with constant stirring thickens the mixture smoothly; higher heat can scramble the eggs into lumps.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, 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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