Skip to main content
Dessert

Viennoise Pudding

A caramelized bread pudding made with bread, sugar, sultanas, candied peel, lemon zest, milk, cream, eggs, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Viennoise Pudding

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Viennoise Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the caramel

  1. Make caramel by cooking 1 oz sugar with a little water until it turns a rich brown color. Allow to cool slightly. Add milk to the caramel and let it dissolve.

Prepare the pudding

  1. Cut the bread into tiny squares and place in a bowl with chopped peel, sultanas, lemon zest, and sherry.

  2. Pour the milk with dissolved caramel over beaten eggs and strain it onto the bread mixture.

  3. Cover with a plate and let it sit for as long as possible.

Steam and serve

  1. Transfer to a buttered mold, cover with greased paper, and steam for 45 minutes, cooking quickly for the first 10 minutes.

  2. Let it shrink, turn it out, and serve with custard or whipped egg sauce.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  4. Milk + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  5. Bread + sherrytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together682 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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 the pudding as it steams, giving it structure.
Bread
Soaks up the custard to form the body of the pudding.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the pudding and, when caramelized, adds deep color and flavor.
Milk
Forms the liquid custard base that soaks the bread and sets with the eggs.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving a softer, smoother texture.

The step that matters

Steaming the pudding. Starting with a quick, hot steam helps the egg custard begin setting before the bread soaks it fully. Keeping the steam gentle afterward prevents the eggs from curdling and leaving a rough, watery texture.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes