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Dessert

Queen of Puddings

A custard pudding topped with strawberries and a vanilla sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 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 base

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

  2. In a bowl, combine bread crumbs and butter.

  3. Beat egg yolks with sugar until creamy, then add milk and mix well.

  4. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake until the custard is set.

  5. Let it cool.

Top and bake

  1. Mash strawberries with sugar and spread over the pudding.

  2. Beat egg whites with sugar until stiff, then spread over the pudding and brown in the oven.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, beat sugar and butter until creamy, then add hot milk and a beaten egg.

  2. Flavor the sauce with vanilla and serve warm.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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
Forms the body of the pudding base, soaking up milk to give it substance.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set, giving it a smooth, tender texture.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the eggs set into a custard.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form a stiff meringue topping that browns in the oven.
Strawberries
Add fruit flavor and moisture to the topping layer.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing to a tender crumb and smooth sauce.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites until stiff. Egg whites must be beaten to firm peaks with sugar to trap air and hold a stable meringue. Under-whipped whites will weep or sink, and the topping will not brown well.

“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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