Skip to main content
Dessert

Queen of Puddings

A baked pudding made with bread crumbs, milk, sugar, eggs, lemon, topped with jelly and meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and 27,232 recipes mention both. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Queen of Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Rub the butter into ¾ cup of sugar and cream together with the yolks until light.

  3. Soak the bread crumbs in the milk, then mix with the creamed mixture and add the lemon rind.

  4. Pour the mixture into a large buttered dish, filling it two-thirds full, and bake until set.

Top and finish

  1. Spread a layer of jelly or jam over the top once slightly cooked.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff, then gradually add ½ cup sugar and the lemon juice.

  3. Spread the meringue over the jelly layer and bake until the meringue begins to brown.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together22,662 recipes

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

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together19,053 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Fine dry bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and form the soft body of the custard.
Milk
Provides the liquid that sets with the egg yolks into a custard.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set during baking, giving it richness.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and the meringue and helps the meringue stay glossy.
Jelly or jam
Adds a fruity sweet layer between the custard and the meringue.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that forms the light, crisp-topped meringue.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff before adding the sugar. Whites must form stable peaks to hold the meringue's air; under-whipped or greasy whites collapse and weep, and sugar added gradually dissolves more fully, keeping the topping smooth.

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

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

  1. Vanillabetter flavor fit
  2. Figbetter flavor fit
  3. Peachabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, sugar, egg, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes