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Dessert

Boiled Lemon Pudding

A boiled pudding made with bread crumbs, suet, flour, sugar, lemon zest and juice, eggs, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Boiled Lemon Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Boil a large saucepan full of water.

  2. Chop the suet finely after removing the skin.

  3. In a basin, mix the flour and chopped suet, ensuring no lumps remain.

  4. Rub the bread crumbs through a sieve into the basin, then add the sugar.

  5. Grate the lemon rinds into the mixture, then squeeze in the lemon juice, avoiding the seeds.

  6. In a separate basin, beat the eggs with the milk.

  7. Combine the egg mixture with the other ingredients and mix well.

Steam and serve

  1. Butter a small pint basin, pour in the mixture, and cover with a cloth tied with string.

  2. Place the basin in the boiling water and steam for about two hours.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Bread crumbs
Provide the bulk of the pudding and absorb the liquid to form a soft body.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
Flour
Gives structure so the pudding holds its shape after steaming.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set during steaming to give a tender texture.
Lemons
Supply aroma from the rind and sharp acidity from the juice.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the pudding moist.

The step that matters

Steaming the covered basin. The cloth must be tied securely and the water kept boiling so steam cooks the pudding evenly. If water boils away or enters the basin, the texture turns soggy or uneven.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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