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Dessert

Citron Pudding

A baked dessert made with milk, stale bread crumbs, eggs, powdered sugar, citron, lemon juice and rind, topped with butter and meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Citron Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks and powdered sugar together.

  3. Gradually add the bread crumbs, milk, and lemon rind.

  4. Pour the mixture into a buttered dish.

  5. Drop in the citron and place a piece of butter on top.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake for 30 minutes.

  2. Once cooled, cover with meringue made from the egg whites, 1 cup powdered sugar, and lemon juice.

  3. Brown the meringue slightly and serve.

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

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks bind the custard and set it as it bakes, while whites form the meringue topping.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and give the pudding its soft, body-filled structure.
Milk
Provides the liquid that sets with the eggs and crumbs into a moist custard.
Citron
Adds chopped candied fruit texture and a sweet, aromatic flavor throughout the pudding.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the custard and, in the meringue, helps it become smooth and stable.

The step that matters

Cover with meringue only after the pudding has cooled. Meringue spread over a hot custard can weep or slide, and the whites need a cool base to hold their shape. Browning should be light so the meringue toasts without drying.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, bread, egg, sugar, 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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