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Dessert

Queen of Puddings

A bread pudding made with bread crumbs, milk, sugar, egg yolks, butter, lemon, topped with fruit jelly and whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

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 base

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

  2. In a large bowl, combine bread crumbs, milk, 1 cup sugar, egg yolks, butter, and lemon extract.

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

Top and finish

  1. Spread a layer of fruit jelly over the baked mixture.

  2. In a separate bowl, whip the egg whites with ¼ cup sugar and lemon juice until frothy.

  3. Spread the whipped egg whites over the jelly.

  4. Return to the oven and bake until the top is golden 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. 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. Bread + milktop 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
Form the body of the pudding and absorb the milk and eggs.
Egg yolks
Enrich and set the custard, giving it a rich, tender texture.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form a foam that bakes into a light, golden topping.
Milk
Provides the liquid that softens the crumbs and sets into the custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and stabilises the whipped egg white topping.
Fruit jelly
Adds a fruity, sweet layer between the custard and the meringue-style topping.

The step that matters

Whipping the egg whites. Egg whites must be whipped to soft peaks with sugar until frothy and glossy. Under-whipped whites stay runny and slide off the jelly, while the sugar helps the foam hold its shape and brown in the oven.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits about as well
  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.

“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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