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Dessert

The Queen of Puddings

A custard pudding made with sugar, butter, egg yolks, bread crumbs, milk, and topped with meringue and optional jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and 19,187 recipes mention both. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

The 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

  1. Cream the sugar and butter together, then beat in the whipped yolks of the eggs.

  2. Add the soaked bread crumbs and milk, then season with vanilla, lemon, or bitter almond.

  3. Beat the mixture for two minutes and pour it into a greased pudding dish.

  4. Bake covered at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes or until the custard is firm in the middle.

Top and serve

  1. Remove from the oven and cover with jelly.

  2. Top with a meringue made from the reserved egg whites beaten stiff with powdered sugar.

  3. Return to the oven until the meringue is delicately colored.

  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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and vanilla share little aroma chemistry, yet 35,032 recipes mention both: they likely work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set firm when baked.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the milk to give the custard body and a soft, light crumb.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the custard sets from as it bakes.
Egg whites
Beaten stiff to form a light meringue that browns in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the meringue brown.

The step that matters

Baking the custard until firm. Baking covered at a moderate temperature lets the egg proteins set gently. Pulling it too early leaves the custard runny, while overbaking can make it weep and turn grainy.

“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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