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Dessert

Piccolimini Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with milk, bread crumbs, sugar, eggs, lemon rind, butter, and topped with jelly and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Piccolimini Pudding

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 pudding

  1. Scald the milk in the baking pan.

  2. Add bread crumbs, sugar, beaten egg yolks, lemon rind, and butter to the milk.

  3. Bake for 30 to 45 minutes at 350°F (175°C).

Top and serve

  1. Whip the egg whites until stiff, then add sugar and lemon juice.

  2. Spread jelly over the baked pudding and cover with the icing.

  3. Bake lightly again.

  4. Serve cold with cream.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and bind the custard so the pudding holds its body when baked.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness as they set in the oven.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks to form a light meringue icing that browns when baked again.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the crumbs soak up and the yolks set into a custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the meringue become stiff and glossy.
Butter
Adds fat for a softer, richer texture in the pudding.

The step that matters

Whipping the egg whites into the icing. Egg whites must be beaten until stiff so the meringue holds its shape and bakes into a light topping. Under-whipped or greasy whites will collapse or weep when baked again.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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