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Dessert

Queen of Puddings

A custard-like pudding made with bread crumbs, milk, eggs, sugar, lemon juice, topped with currant jelly and meringue, served cold with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Queen of Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Soak the bread crumbs in the milk until swollen.

  2. Add the beaten eggs, sugar, and 1 teaspoon of lemon juice and stir well.

  3. Bake until the mixture is set.

Top and serve

  1. Spread currant jelly on top.

  2. Make a meringue with the egg whites, 2 tablespoons of sugar, and remaining lemon juice.

  3. Spread the meringue on the jelly and brown slightly.

  4. Serve cold with 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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

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

  4. Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Bread + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,398 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Coagulate as they heat, setting the custard into a sliceable body.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and swell, giving the custard a soft, tender body.
Milk
Provides the liquid that keeps the custard moist and creamy as it sets.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that forms a light meringue topping.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the meringue foam stiffen and hold.
Currant jelly
Adds tart, fruity sweetness and a glossy layer beneath the meringue.

The step that matters

Bake only until the custard is just set. Egg proteins coagulate as they heat. Overbaking tightens them until the custard curdles and weeps liquid, while underbaking leaves it runny and unable to hold its shape.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Currantthe original

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