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Dessert

Queen of Puddings

A custard-like pudding made with bread crumbs, milk, eggs, sugar, butter, and lemon, topped with meringue.

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

  1. Soak the bread crumbs in the milk.

  2. Beat the egg yolks and 4 egg whites with the sugar until well combined.

  3. Add the lemon extract and butter to the mixture.

  4. Combine the soaked bread crumbs with the egg mixture and pour into a baking dish.

  5. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

Top and finish

  1. Beat the remaining egg whites with the sugar until stiff peaks form.

  2. Spread the meringue over the baked pudding and return to the oven until the meringue is light 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. 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. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Soak up the milk and give the custard body and a soft, tender structure.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as it bakes and add richness and color.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar, they form the meringue topping that gives a light, airy crust.
Milk
Provides the liquid that sets with the eggs into a custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and meringue and helps the whites hold stiff peaks.

The step that matters

Beat the meringue to stiff peaks. Egg whites under-whipped will collapse or weep on top of the pudding, while the sugar stabilises the foam so it holds its shape and browns evenly in the oven.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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