Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Pudding to Bake

A baked lemon pudding made with sugar, lemon rind, juice, eggs, clarified butter, bread crumbs, and puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread 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 to Bake

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, combine the pounded sugar and grated lemon rind.

Make the filling

  1. Add the lemon juice and beaten eggs to the mixture.

  2. Mix in the clarified butter and bread crumbs until well combined.

Bake

  1. Line a baking dish with puff pastry and pour the lemon mixture into it.

  2. Bake until set and lightly golden.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the filling into a custard-like texture as they cook and coagulate.
Clarified butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender texture to the filling.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps balance the tartness of the lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright lemon flavour that cuts through the sweetness.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the filling body so it holds together when baked.

The step that matters

Bake until set and lightly golden. Eggs set when heated to roughly 70°C, so underbaking leaves a runny centre, while overbaking can make the custard curdle and turn grainy. Watch for a firm wobble-free centre and a light golden top.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, butter, 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes