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Dessert

Boiled Lemon Pudding

A boiled dessert made from suet, breadcrumbs, flour, eggs, lemon peel, lemon juice, sugar, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Boiled Lemon Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the suet, breadcrumbs, sugar, and flour together.

  2. Add the finely minced lemon peel and strained lemon juice.

  3. Moisten the mixture with the eggs and enough milk to achieve a thick batter consistency.

Boil and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a well-buttered mold.

  2. Boil for 3½ hours.

  3. Turn out the pudding, sprinkle with sifted sugar, and serve with or without wine 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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

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

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the steamed pudding moist and tender.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding a light, soft body.
Flour
Provides structure so the batter sets firm while boiling.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it hold together as it cooks.
Lemons
Add acidity and aroma from the peel and juice.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps moisten the finished pudding.

The step that matters

Boil for 3½ hours. The pudding must cook long enough and at a steady simmer so the batter sets through; too little time leaves it soggy in the centre, and a hard boil can make the mold leak water into the pudding.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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