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Dessert

Queen Pudding

A layered pudding dessert with a sweet frosting of egg whites and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,053 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Queen Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Mix puddings and sugar into the milk and crumbs.

  2. Bake until light brown.

Top and brown

  1. Cover with jelly, jam, or canned strawberries.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  3. Add 4 tablespoons of sugar to the beaten egg whites.

  4. Add some lemon juice to the frosting.

  5. Spread the beaten egg whites over the jam.

  6. Return the dish to the oven.

  7. Let it 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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Beaten until stiff, they form a light meringue topping that sets and browns in the oven.
Milk
Provides the liquid that softens the crumbs and sets into a tender custard base.
Crumbs
Absorb the milk and give the pudding its body and structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and, in the meringue, helps it stay glossy and brown.
Jelly or jam
Adds fruit sweetness and a tart layer between the base and the meringue.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff. Whites under-beaten stay runny and slide off the jam, while over-beaten whites turn grainy and dry. Stiff, glossy peaks hold their shape and brown evenly in the oven.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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