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Dessert

Lemon Cream Pudding

A custard-like dessert made with lemon juice, rind, egg yolks, starch, flour, sugar, boiling water, and folded egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,165 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Cream Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, stir together the lemon juice, lemon rind, egg yolks, corn starch, flour, and sugar.

  2. Pour the boiling water over the mixture.

  3. Cook in a double boiler until it begins to thicken.

Finish

  1. Remove from heat and fold in the beaten egg whites.

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. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Lemon + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set and add richness to the pudding.
Egg whites
Fold in at the end to lighten the pudding and give it an airy texture.
Corn starch
Thickens the custard as it heats with the boiling water.
Flour
Adds body and helps thicken the custard alongside the corn starch.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright lemon flavour to the custard.

The step that matters

Cook in a double boiler until it begins to thicken. Starch thickens only when heated enough to swell its granules, but overheating can scramble the egg yolks and make the custard grainy. Gentle, indirect heat and steady stirring keep it smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Blueberryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, corn, flour, sugar. 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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