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Dessert

Queen Pudding

A bread pudding made with soaked crumbs, milk, yolks, sugar, butter, topped with jelly and meringue, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Queen Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard

  1. Soak the bread crumbs in the hot milk.

  2. Rub the butter and sugar together.

  3. Stir in the beaten egg yolks.

  4. Mix all ingredients together with your choice of flavoring.

  5. Bake in a deep pudding dish until set.

Top and serve

  1. Cover the pudding with jelly.

  2. Make meringue by whipping the egg whites with ½ cup sugar until stiff.

  3. Top with meringue.

  4. Brown in the oven.

  5. Serve cold with cream.

  6. Use fresh fruit instead of jelly.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Fine bread crumbs
Form the body of the pudding by soaking up the hot milk and holding the custard together.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that the eggs set into a soft custard.
Egg yolks
Set the custard when baked and add richness and a smooth texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and the meringue and helps the whites stay stiff.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that forms the light, stiff meringue topping.
Jelly or jam
Adds a fruity layer of sweetness and moisture between the custard and meringue.

The step that matters

Browning the meringue. Meringue is sugar and whipped egg white, which browns quickly in the oven. Too much heat or time can scorch the top and make it weep or turn bitter, so watch it closely until lightly golden.

“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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