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Dessert

Lemon Pudding

A lemon-flavored pudding made with sponge cake, butter, sugar, and egg yolks, topped with beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,227 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Lemon Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the lemon custard

  1. Combine lemon rind, lemon juice, butter, sugar, and cold water in a saucepan.

  2. Add egg yolks and boil until thick.

Assemble and bake

  1. Split each sponge cake into 4 pieces and place in a pudding dish.

  2. Pour the boiling mixture over the sponge cake pieces.

  3. Beat egg whites with sugar until stiff, then spread over the pudding.

  4. Brown slightly in the oven and 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. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 lemon mixture, and whites whip into a stiff topping.
Butter
Adds richness and a soft, smooth texture to the lemon mixture.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the egg whites whip into a stable meringue.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright lemon flavour that balances the sweetness.
Sponge cakes
Form the base that soaks up the hot lemon mixture.

The step that matters

Boil the lemon mixture until thick. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but if they overheat they can curdle and turn grainy. Cook gently while stirring, and stop once the mixture coats a spoon.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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