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Dessert

Semolina Pudding

A sweet pudding made from semolina, milk, lemon rind, sugar, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Semolina and lemon work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Semolina Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the semolina base

  1. Mix the semolina with a portion of the milk until smooth.

  2. Bring the remaining milk to a boil with the sugar and lemon rind.

  3. Add the semolina mixture and cook for 10 minutes.

  4. Remove the lemon rind and let the mixture cool.

Bake

  1. Beat the eggs and mix them into the cooled semolina.

  2. Pour the mixture into a buttered pie dish and bake until golden.

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. Semolina + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together124 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  3. Semolina + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together351 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

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

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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

Semolina
Thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the pudding its body and a set texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the semolina swells in and gives the pudding its creaminess.
Eggs
Add richness and help the pudding set and firm as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and contributes to browning on the surface in the oven.
Lemon rind
Adds aromatic oils that flavour the milk while it heats, then is removed.

The step that matters

Add the semolina mixture and cook for 10 minutes. Semolina must be stirred constantly as it heats, or it clumps and scorches on the bottom. Cooking it fully swells the starch so the pudding thickens properly before baking.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Coconutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against semolina, milk, sugar, 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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