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Dessert

Crumb Pudding

A pudding made with sweet milk, bread crumbs, sugar, egg yolks, butter, lemon extract, powdered sugar, and jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Crumb Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the pudding

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. In a bowl, combine sweet milk, bread crumbs, sugar, egg yolks, butter, and Royce's lemon extract.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake until set.

Add the topping

  1. Spread a layer of jelly over the baked pudding.

  2. Whip the egg whites until frothy, then gradually add powdered sugar.

  3. Pour the whipped egg whites over the jelly and bake until light brown.

Serve

  1. Serve cold.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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

Bread crumbs
Provide the bulk and body of the custard, soaking up the milk to hold the pudding together.
Sweet milk
Supplies the liquid that moistens the crumbs and sets with the eggs into a soft custard.
Egg yolks
Coagulate during baking to set the custard and add richness and a smooth texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the topping brown as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, moist texture in the pudding.

The step that matters

Bake the whipped topping until light brown. Sugar in the meringue browns quickly through Maillard browning and caramelization, so it can darken too far. Watch it closely to keep it light and avoid a bitter, over-baked top.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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