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Dessert

Lemon Pudding

A baked lemon pudding topped with meringue, served with cold cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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.

Make the pudding

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

  2. In a bowl, mix the bread crumbs, milk, sugar, egg yolks, lemon rind, and butter.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake until set.

Make the meringue and finish

  1. In another bowl, whip the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Gradually add 4 tablespoons of sugar and 1 tablespoon of lemon juice to the egg whites, continuing to whip until glossy.

  3. Spread the meringue over the pudding and return to the oven to brown.

  4. Serve with cold cream.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks enrich and set the custard, while whipped whites form the light meringue topping.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and give the pudding body while it bakes.
Milk
Provides the liquid that sets with the eggs and crumbs into a soft custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and stabilises the whipped egg whites into a glossy meringue.
Butter
Adds richness and fat for a tender texture.

The step that matters

Whipping the egg whites to glossy stiff peaks. Egg whites must be whipped until stiff and glossy, and sugar added gradually, so the meringue holds its shape and browns evenly. Underwhipped or greasy whites will weep or collapse on the pudding.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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