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Dessert

Queen of Puddings

A cake-based pudding made with broken fruit cake, eggs, sugar, milk, butter, and lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. 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.

Make the pudding

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

  2. In a large bowl, mix the broken cake, 3 eggs, 4 ounces of sugar, milk, butter, and lemon rind until well combined.

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

Top and brown

  1. While the pudding is baking, beat the reserved egg white with 2 ounces of sugar until stiff peaks form.

  2. Spread the beaten egg white over the top of the pudding and return to the oven for a few minutes to brown slightly.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the custard and set it into a soft, sliced-able texture.
Cake
Soaks up the milk and egg custard, giving the pudding body and a tender crumb.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, supplying moisture for the pudding to set.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and, when whipped with egg white, stabilizes the meringue topping.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing to a smoother, more tender custard.

The step that matters

Beating the egg white to stiff peaks. Egg white under-beaten stays runny and won't hold its shape, while over-beaten whites turn dry and grainy. Stiff, glossy peaks trap air that cooks into a light, browned meringue.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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