Whereas England can boast of the Sussex Pond pudding, the land Down Under has the Lemon Delicious pudding, the “delicious” bit being appropriately situated down under the “pudding” bit.

While the Sussex Pond pudding uses a rich suet pastry to encase butter, sugar and an entire lemon, which cooks to a mellow softness over four hours of steaming, Lemon Delicious pudding is a quickly made lemon batter that separates during baking to form a light, golden, cakey sponge on top and a rich, gooey lemon curd below.

Both are “self-saucing” puddings, one of the noblest of offices in all of Puddingdom. The Sussex Pudding is well documented, with H. J. Glover stating in Florence White’s wonderful Good Things in England (1932) that the recipe was given to him “at Chailey, Sussex, by a nursemaid in 1880 or thereabouts”.

The Oxford Companion to Food suggests that it dates from 1750, with the whole lemon being a later innovation.

Lemon Delicious is in every Australian cook’s domestic repertoire, but it appears that the recipe may have originated in America. Lemon sponge pudding pops up in American books such as The Lily Wallace New American Cook Book (1946) and The American People’s Cookbook (1956) before making its appearance in any Australian cookbook.

Known variously as Lemon Delicious and Lemon Surprise, it is both delicious and a surprise. As Mr Glover said of the Sussex Pond Pudding: “If you don’t know this and think it uninteresting, try it.”

Ingredients
Serves 4

Prep: 15 min
Cook: 50 min

60g butter
200g caster sugar
3 eggs, separated
60g plain flour, sifted
1 tbsp grated lemon zest
100ml lemon juice
250ml milk icing sugar for dusting

METHOD

Heat the oven to 180C/Gas 4. In a food processor, beat the butter, sugar and lemon zest until they are pale and creamy. Add the egg yolks, then the flour, then the lemon juice, then the milk, until you have a smooth batter.

In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until firm but not stiff, and fold the two mixtures together.

Pour into a buttered, ovenproof 20cm diameter soufflé or baking dish, and place in a baking tray. Half-fill the tray with hot water and bake for about 45 to 50 minutes until the top is lightly browned and set, and there is a sort of gooey lemon curd below.

Remove the dish from the tray, dust with icing sugar and serve hot, with or without cream.

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