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Dessert

Lemon Pudding

A baked lemon custard topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Lemon Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the pudding

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, combine milk, bread crumbs, egg yolks, lemon juice, lemon rind, and butter.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake for 30 minutes.

Make the meringue and finish

  1. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until soft peaks form.

  2. Gradually add powdered sugar while continuing to beat until stiff peaks form.

  3. Spread the meringue over the baked pudding and return to the oven until browned.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Milk
Provides the liquid that sets into a soft, custard-like body.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the liquid and give the pudding body and structure.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set in the oven, adding richness.
Lemon juice and rind
Add acidity and bright lemon aroma that cut through the richness.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam to form the airy, stable meringue topping.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the meringue and helps it hold stiff peaks.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to stiff peaks. Egg whites must be whipped until the foam holds stiff peaks so the meringue stays airy and browns evenly. Adding sugar gradually helps stabilize the foam; underbeaten or greasy whites will collapse and weep.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, bread, egg, 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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