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.
Prepare the crust
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Line a pudding dish with pie paste.
Bake until golden.
Spread the baked crust with jam.
Make the filling and bake
In a bowl, mix bread crumbs, butter, lemon juice, lemon rind, sugar, and egg yolks.
Fold in the beaten egg whites until combined.
Pour the mixture into the prepared crust and bake until slightly brown.
Serve
Serve with cream.
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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Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
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Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,227 recipes
Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
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Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Egg yolks enrich and set the filling, while beaten whites lighten it into a soft texture.
- Bread crumbs
- Bread crumbs add body to the filling and soak up the lemon juice and butter.
- Butter
- Butter adds richness and a tender texture to the filling.
- Sugar
- Sugar sweetens the filling and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
- Lemon juice and rind
- Lemon juice brings acidity and the rind adds concentrated lemon aroma.
- Jam
- Jam sits on the baked crust, adding sweetness and fruit flavour beneath the filling.
The step that matters
Folding in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites hold air only when beaten to soft peaks and folded gently, so overmixing deflates them and the pudding bakes up dense rather than light.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, sugar, egg):
- Vanillafits better
- Figfits better
- Datesfits about as well
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, sugar, 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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