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Preserve

Boiled Lemon Pudding

A boiled pudding made with bread crumbs, suet, flour, sugar, lemons, eggs, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Boiled Lemon Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Boil a large saucepan of water.

  2. Chop the suet finely after removing the skin.

  3. In a bowl, mix the flour and chopped suet, ensuring no lumps remain.

  4. Sift the bread crumbs into the bowl and add the sugar.

  5. Grate the lemon rinds into the bowl, then squeeze in the juice, avoiding the seeds, and mix well.

  6. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs with the milk.

  7. Combine the egg mixture with the other ingredients and mix thoroughly.

Steam and serve

  1. Butter a small pint basin, pour in the mixture, cover with a cloth sprinkled with flour, and tie it securely with string.

  2. Once the water is boiling, place the pudding in the saucepan.

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 + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Bread crumbs
Provide the bulk of the pudding and absorb moisture from the batter.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
Flour
Thickens the batter and gives the pudding structure.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set as it cooks.
Lemons
Supply aromatic zest and acidity that brighten the sweet pudding.

The step that matters

Keeping the cloth and basin sealed while steaming. If the cloth is loose or the string slips, water can seep into the basin and make the pudding soggy. Tying it securely and placing it into already boiling water helps it cook evenly and keeps its texture.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, flour, sugar, 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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