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Dessert

Boiled Lemon Pudding

A pudding made from lemon juice, rind, suet, bread crumbs, nutmeg, sugar, and eggs, boiled and served with brandy or rum sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Boiled Lemon Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the lemon juice, grated rind, beef suet, bread crumbs, nutmeg, sugar, and eggs in a bowl.

  2. Grease a mold with butter and line the top with buttered paper.

  3. Cover the mold with a cloth and tie it securely.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil the pudding for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

  2. Turn the pudding out onto a dish and serve with brandy or rum sauce.

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 + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

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

  5. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef suet
Adds richness and fat, keeping the pudding moist and tender as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Provides bulk and absorbs the liquid, giving the pudding a soft, cake-like body.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help set the pudding as it cooks.
Lump sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon juice and rind
Add acidity and bright aroma that cut through the richness of the suet.

The step that matters

Securing the cloth around the mold. A loose cloth or poorly sealed mold lets water seep in during boiling, which makes the pudding soggy and can wash out its flavour. Tying the cloth firmly keeps the pudding enclosed and its texture even.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread, nutmeg, sugar, egg, butter. 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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