Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Bread Pudding

A baked pudding made from suet, breadcrumbs, flour, sugar, lemon, milk, and eggs, served with lemon sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beef and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,759 recipes. Both carry 1-hexanal, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Lemon Bread Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Shred the beef suet.

  2. In a bowl, mix the suet, breadcrumbs, flour, sugar, lemon rind, lemon juice, milk, and beaten eggs.

  3. Butter a basin and decorate the inside with raisins, candied fruit, or sliced lemon rind.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into the basin, cover with a floured cloth, and plunge into boiling water.

  2. Boil quickly for about 3 hours.

  3. Turn out onto a dish and serve with lemon 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. Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

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

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

Beef suet
Adds richness and fat, keeping the pudding moist as it cooks.
Breadcrumbs
Form the body of the pudding and soak up the liquid to set it.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firm as it cooks.
Milk
Adds moisture and softens the breadcrumbs into a pourable batter.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and a soft, caramel-like flavour.
Lemon rind and juice
Add aroma and a bright acidity that balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Keep the water boiling quickly. The pudding is steamed in a covered basin for about 3 hours. If the water drops below a steady boil, heat transfer slows and the pudding may cook unevenly or turn heavy, so the pot needs topping up with boiling water.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes