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Dessert

Queen Pudding

A baked pudding of bread crumbs, milk, sugar, eggs, vanilla, stewed apples, topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. 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

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

Make the pudding base

  1. In a bowl, combine bread crumbs, milk, sugar, eggs, and vanilla.

  2. Pour the mixture into a baking dish.

  3. Spread stewed apples over the top of the pudding.

Make the meringue and bake

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then gradually add 2 tablespoons of sugar.

  2. Spread the meringue over the apples.

  3. Return to the oven and bake until the meringue is delicately browned.

  4. Serve hot.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Vanilla + appletop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,501 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and eggs to give the pudding a soft, set body.
Eggs
Bind the custard so it sets, and their whites form the meringue topping.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the bread absorbs and the eggs set into a custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and, dissolved into the egg whites, stabilises the meringue.
Stewed apples
Add moisture, tartness and fruit flavour between the custard and meringue.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to stiff peaks. Whites under-beaten or greased will not hold air, so the meringue weeps or stays flat. Adding sugar gradually helps the foam stay stable and glossy.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Applethe original

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