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Dessert

Another Lemon Pudding

A lemon pudding made with lemon juice, rind, bruised ratafias, sugar, cream, eggs, and nutmeg, baked in puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Another Lemon Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the filling

  1. Rub the rind of the lemons on lumps of sugar and place in a bowl.

  2. Add the lemon juice, bruised ratafias, sugar, cream, yolks, salt, and nutmeg.

  3. Whisk the mixture together for five minutes.

Assemble and bake

  1. Prepare puff pastry and line a pie dish with it, adding a thin border around the edge.

  2. Pour the pudding mixture into the lined dish and sprinkle bruised ratafias on top.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for about 30 minutes until it is a light fawn color.

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 + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

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

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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

Lemon juice
Provides the sharp acidity that balances the sugar and cream.
Egg yolks
Set into a custard as they heat, giving the filling its body and richness.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, softening the set custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the lemon's acidity.

The step that matters

Bake until light fawn. The egg yolks and cream set into a custard as they heat. Stopping at a light golden colour keeps the filling smooth; overbaking can make it grainy or cause it to weep liquid.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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