Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Bread Pudding

A baked pudding made with bread crumbs, flour, sugar, eggs, lemon, milk, suet, and optional candied peel or raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Bread Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA steady oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a steady oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Mix the dry ingredients: bread crumbs, flour, and sugar.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine the eggs, lemon juice, and milk.

  4. Add the wet mixture to the dry ingredients and mix well.

Bake and serve

  1. Fold in the chopped suet and optional ingredients if using.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased basin.

  3. Bake for about 1 hour or until set.

  4. Serve with lemon sauce if desired.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Bread crumbs
Form the body of the pudding and soak up the liquid to create a soft crumb.
Eggs
Set the pudding as they cook, giving it structure and a custardy texture.
Milk
Adds moisture and softens the crumbs, helping the mixture bind and bake tender.
Suet
Adds richness and fat, giving the pudding a moist, tender texture.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps with browning as the pudding bakes.
Lemon
Adds bright acidity and aroma from the rind and juice.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture into a greased basin. Greasing the basin keeps the pudding from sticking as it sets, so it releases cleanly when turned out. Baking until set ensures the eggs have firmed the crumb throughout.

Swap the raisin

The recipe marks raisin as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, flour, sugar, egg, lemon, milk):

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Orangefits less well

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