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Dessert

Baked Lemon Pudding

A baked lemon pudding made with lemon zest, sugar, eggs, cream, milk, cake crumbs, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Baked Lemon Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Grate the rind of the lemons into a bowl with the sugar.

  2. Pound the cinnamon stick in a mortar until fine.

  3. Add the cinnamon to the sugar in the bowl and mix well.

  4. Stir in the cake crumbs until combined.

  5. Juice the lemons and strain the juice into the bowl.

  6. Beat in the eggs until well mixed.

  7. Stir in the cream and milk until smooth.

  8. Whip the egg whites until stiff and gently fold them into the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Pour the mixture into a pie dish lined with puff pastry.

  3. Bake until set and lightly browned, about 30-40 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 + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Set the custard and add richness and structure as they bake.
Lemons
Supply the bright acidity and aroma that define the pudding.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps balance the lemon's acidity.
Cake crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding body and a tender texture.
Cream
Adds fat for a smooth, rich texture.
Milk
Adds liquid that loosens the batter and softens the set custard.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped egg whites. Whites beaten to stiff peaks trap air that lifts the mixture. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring hard deflates it and leaves a denser pudding.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, cream, milk, cinnamon. 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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