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Dessert

Lemon Pudding

A baked lemon custard made with milk, bread crumbs, butter, eggs, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, combine lemon juice and sugar until well blended.

  2. Soak bread crumbs in milk.

Make and bake the pudding

  1. Add melted butter, beaten eggs, and lemon mixture to the soaked crumbs just before baking.

  2. Pour into a baking dish and bake at 400°F (200°C) until a knife inserted comes out clean.

Finish and serve

  1. Frost with reserved egg whites and brown in the oven.

  2. Serve hot or 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. 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. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base that soaks the crumbs and sets into the custard body.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the milk and give the pudding body and a soft, tender structure.
Eggs
Set during baking to bind the pudding and add richness and structure.
Lemon
Adds acidity and aroma, with rind and juice flavouring the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, more tender texture.

The step that matters

Bake until a knife comes out clean. Eggs set as the custard heats; underbaking leaves a runny centre, while overbaking makes the pudding dry and curdled. A clean knife shows it is set.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, 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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