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Dessert

Lemon Pudding

A steamed lemon pudding made with flour, breadcrumbs, suet, egg, milk, lemon, sugar, baking powder, and syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Lemon Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. In a basin, combine flour, bread crumbs, sugar, and baking powder.

  2. Add suet, grate the lemon rind, and add it to the mixture.

  3. Squeeze and strain the lemon juice into a cup.

  4. Whisk the egg and mix in the syrup.

  5. Add the milk and lemon juice to the egg mixture and stir well.

  6. Combine all ingredients and pour into a greased and floured basin.

Steam and serve

  1. Cover with greased paper and steam for two hours.

  2. Serve with sweet 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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it steams.
Bread crumbs
Add body and a light, absorbent texture to the batter.
Suet
Adds fat, which gives the pudding a rich, moist crumb.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps it set firm as it cooks.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking so the pudding rises and stays light.
Lemon
Its juice and rind add acidity and bright lemon aroma.

The step that matters

Pour into a greased and floured basin. Grease and flour stop the pudding from sticking to the basin, so it releases cleanly when turned out. The paper cover keeps steam in and the surface from drying out during the long steam.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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