Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Lemon Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the batter
In a bowl, combine the suet, bread crumbs, flour, sugar, salt, and finely minced lemon rind.
Add the beaten eggs and mix well.
Steam and serve
Pour the mixture into a buttered mold and cover with buttered paper.
Place the mold in a saucepan of boiling water and steam for 2 hours.
Turn out the pudding and serve with lemon sauce.
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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Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together30,404 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
- Suet
- Adds richness and fat, keeping the pudding moist and tender as it steams.
- Bread crumbs
- Absorbs liquid and gives the pudding a light, soft body.
- Flour
- Provides structure so the pudding holds its shape when turned out.
- Eggs
- Bind the mixture and help set it as it steams.
- Lemon rind
- Contributes aromatic lemon oil and flavor throughout the pudding.
The step that matters
Steaming the mold. The mold must sit in boiling water for the full steaming time with the water kept at a steady boil. Steam provides gentle, even heat that cooks the batter through without drying it; if the water stops boiling or runs low, the pudding cooks unevenly and can turn heavy.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, flour, bread):
- Raisinfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Figfits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, flour, bread. 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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