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 ↓
Lemon 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.
Make the base
Scald the milk.
Pour the scalded milk over the bread crumbs.
Let the mixture stand for 30 minutes.
Mix and bake
Stir in the sugar, butter, egg yolks, lemon juice, and grated lemon rind. Mix well until combined.
Transfer the mixture to a baking dish.
Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.
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.
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Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together11,466 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
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Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
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Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Stale bread crumbs
- Soak up the hot milk and give the pudding its body.
- Egg yolks
- Enrich the custard and help it set as it bakes.
- Milk
- Provides the liquid that softens the crumbs and forms the custard.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the lemon.
- Lemon juice
- Adds acidity and bright lemon flavor.
- Butter
- Adds richness and a smooth texture.
The step that matters
Baking until set. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but overbaking makes the custard curdle and turn grainy. Bake only until the centre is just set and still slightly wobbly.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, bread, sugar, butter, egg):
- Vanillafits better
- Figfits better
- Peachfits about as well
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against milk, bread, sugar, butter, 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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