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Dessert

Queen of Puddings

A custard pudding made with milk, eggs, butter, sugar, breadcrumbs, lemon rind, and jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 custard base

  1. Boil the milk with the butter.

  2. Pour the hot milk over the breadcrumbs and let soak.

  3. Add the yolks of the eggs, grated lemon rind, and sugar.

  4. Pour the mixture into a buttered pie dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

Add jam and meringue

  1. Remove from the oven.

  2. Spread jam over the top.

  3. Allow to cool slightly.

  4. Beat the egg whites until stiff. Add 2 tablespoons of sugar and mix the whites and sugar together.

  5. Spread the mixture over the top.

  6. Sprinkle with sugar.

  7. Bake until very pale brown.

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. Butter + sugartop 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
Yolks set the custard, and whites whipped with sugar form the topping.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb the hot milk and give the custard body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that sets into the custard.
Jam
Adds a sweet, fruity layer between custard and meringue.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the meringue become glossy and browned.

The step that matters

Bake until very pale brown. Meringue is baked only until lightly browned, because overbaking makes it weep, shrink, and turn tough. Sugar browning happens quickly at the surface, so watch closely.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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