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Dessert

Nonpareil Pudding

A baked pudding made with bread crumbs, milk, butter, sugar, lemon, egg yolks, topped with fruit jelly and 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 ↓

Nonpareil 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).

  2. Mix the bread crumbs, milk, melted butter, sugar, lemon juice, and egg yolks in a bowl until well combined.

Bake and top

  1. Pour the mixture into buttered pans and bake for about 1 hour until set in the middle.

  2. Remove from the oven and spread the fruit jelly over the top.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then gradually add the granulated sugar and a few drops of flavoring.

  4. Spread the meringue over the jelly and return the puddings to the oven with the door slightly open to dry and lightly brown the meringue.

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

White bread crumbs
Form the body of the pudding and soak up the milk and butter for a soft, tender crumb.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps the custard-like base set softly when baked.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and help it set into a rich, tender custard.
Egg whites
Whipped into the meringue to form a light, stable topping that dries and browns in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the meringue stay stable and lightly browned.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the pudding a tender texture.

The step that matters

Spread the meringue over the jelly and return to the oven. Egg whites beaten to stiff peaks can collapse or weep if underbaked or overmixed with sugar. Leaving the oven door slightly open lets moisture escape so the meringue dries and browns rather than steaming.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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