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Dessert

Queen of Puddings

A custard pudding made with bread crumbs, milk, egg yolks, butter, and topped with a meringue.

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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the custard

  1. Soak the bread crumbs in the milk.

  2. In a bowl, mix the soaked bread crumbs, egg yolks, butter, milk, lemon, and sugar.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

Top with meringue

  1. In another bowl, beat the egg whites with the white sugar and lemon extract until stiff peaks form.

  2. Spread the meringue over the pudding and bake until light brown.

Cool and serve

  1. Let cool before serving.

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
Soak up the milk and give the custard body.
Egg yolks
Set the custard and add richness.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the custard sets from.
Butter
Adds fat for a softer, richer texture.
White sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the meringue hold stiff peaks.

The step that matters

Baking the meringue until light brown. Egg white meringue needs gentle heat to set and brown lightly. Overbaking makes it tough and can cause weeping, where liquid beads on the surface.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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