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Dessert

Fayettkville Lemon Pudding

A lemon custard baked in pie crusts and served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Fayettkville Lemon Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Separate the eggs and beat the yolks.

  2. Mix the yolks with the sugar, cream, butter, flour, lemon rind, and lemon juice.

  3. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into pie crusts and bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until puffed and lightly browned.

  2. Serve cold.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the filling and beaten whites lighten it and help it puff in the oven.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the custard set and brown lightly.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, giving the filling a smooth, tender texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, tender texture.
Flour
Helps thicken the filling so it holds its shape when baked.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright lemon flavour that balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Whites beaten until stiff trap air that makes the pudding puff. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring hard deflates the foam and leaves a denser result.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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