Skip to main content
Dessert

The Queen of Puddings

A sweet bread crumb pudding topped with meringue and acid jelly, served with cold cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and 27,232 recipes mention both. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

The 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.

Prepare the custard

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

  2. In a bowl, combine bread crumbs, sweet milk, 1 cup sugar, egg yolks, grated lemon rind, and butter. Mix well.

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

Make the meringue

  1. While the pudding is baking, beat the egg whites to stiff peaks and gradually add 1 cup sugar, then stir in lemon juice.

Assemble and serve

  1. Once the pudding is baked, spread a layer of acid jelly on top, then add the meringue.

  2. Return to the oven to brown the meringue slightly.

  3. Serve with cold cream.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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, soaking up milk to set into a soft, tender base.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set into a smooth, creamy texture when baked.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that forms the light, airy meringue topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and, dissolved into the whites, stabilises the meringue and helps it brown.
Sweet milk
Provides the liquid that the bread crumbs absorb and that the egg yolks set into custard.

The step that matters

Adding sugar to the egg whites gradually. Sugar added slowly to whipped egg whites dissolves and stabilises the foam, giving a glossy meringue that holds its peaks. Adding it all at once or to under-whipped whites can leave the meringue weeping or flat.

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

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

  1. Vanillabetter flavor fit
  2. Figbetter flavor fit
  3. Coconutbetter flavor fit
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, sugar, egg, butter, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes