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Queen of Puddings with Strawberry Meringue

A custard pudding topped with sugared strawberries and meringue.

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 of Puddings with Strawberry Meringue

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 butter and 1 cup of sugar together.

  2. Beat in the whipped egg yolks, then add the soaked bread crumbs and milk.

  3. Season with lemon flavoring and mix well.

  4. Fill a pudding dish two-thirds full and bake at 350°F (175°C) until the custard is set.

Top and serve

  1. Remove from the oven and cover with strawberries rolled in sugar.

  2. Top with meringue made from the whipped egg whites and ½ cup of sugar.

  3. Bake until the meringue begins to color.

  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 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. Butter + milktop 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. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + milktop 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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard when baked, and whipped whites form the meringue topping.
Fine bread crumbs
Soak up the milk and give the pudding its body and soft crumb.
Milk
Provides the liquid that sets with the eggs into a tender custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and, when whipped with egg whites, stabilizes the meringue.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender texture to the custard.
Strawberries
Add fresh fruit flavor and acidity against the sweet custard and meringue.

The step that matters

Bake the custard until set. Egg proteins coagulate as the custard heats, so removing it too early leaves a runny centre, while overbaking can make it watery or grainy.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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