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Dessert

Queen Pudding

A lemon-flavored bread pudding topped with meringue and served with hard sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Queen 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.

Prepare the custard

  1. Soak the grated bread in 1 cup of milk for 30 minutes.

  2. Beat the egg yolk with the milk and add the sugar.

  3. Combine the soaked bread with the egg mixture, lemon juice, and lemon rind.

Bake and top

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 20 minutes.

  2. Beat the egg white with 2 teaspoons of sugar until stiff peaks form.

  3. Spread the meringue on top of the pudding and return to the oven to brown.

Serve

  1. Serve warm with hard sauce.

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 + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Grated bread
Soaks up the milk and egg mixture, giving the pudding its body.
Egg yolk
Enriches the custard and helps it set as it bakes.
Milk
Moistens the bread and forms the liquid base of the custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the whipped egg white hold its shape.
Egg white
Whipped into a stiff meringue that puffs and browns on top.
Lemon juice
Adds bright acidity that balances the sweetness of the custard.

The step that matters

Whipping the meringue to stiff peaks and spreading it over the pudding. Egg white whipped until stiff traps air, and sugar helps keep that foam stable. Spreading the meringue fully to the edges helps it hold its shape and brown evenly in the oven.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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