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The Proof Is in the Pudding (Cake)
Does a 2021 recipe for lemon pudding cake stack up to its 1921 predecessor? Or would a mid-century upstart upstage them both?
Everything old is new again. This is true of fashion and art, as well as recipes that sometimes reappear as counterpoints to more modern culinary interpretations. Older is not necessarily better, of course, but it can be fun to compare how ingredients and proportions have changed over the decades and gauge the effects of both on the final product, especially if the older recipe is a family favorite.
In a recent test case, the family favorite was a lemon dessert. While scanning the cooking section of The New York Times this past week, my wife happened to see a recipe for “Lemon Pudding Cake.” As keeper of a vast catalogue of cherished family recipes — some now a century old and handwritten by her grandmother, Lorena Bradley Johnson, in cloth-covered accounting ledgers — my wife can evaluate recipes quickly and thoroughly based on her own cooking expertise.
I learned that a similar lemon dessert first appeared in Lorena’s 1921 ledger, which she started when she and her husband left Arcata, California to homestead on land in Canada.
