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Dessert

Queen of Puddings

A custard-like bread pudding topped with lemon meringue and jelly, served with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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.

Prepare the pudding

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the bread crumbs, milk, 1 cup sugar, egg yolks, butter, and grated lemon rind until well combined.

  3. Pour the mixture into a pudding dish and bake until set but not watery.

Make the meringue and assemble

  1. In another bowl, whip the egg whites until soft peaks form, then gradually beat in 1 cup sugar and lemon juice.

  2. Once the pudding has cooled slightly, spread a layer of jelly or preserves on top.

  3. Spread the meringue over the jelly and return to the oven to bake lightly.

Serve

  1. Serve 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Form the body of the pudding and soak up the milk and egg for a soft, tender set.
Milk
Provides the liquid that sets with the eggs into a custard-like texture.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set, giving the pudding its rich, smooth structure.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, more tender crumb.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam to form the light, stable meringue topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and, in the meringue, stabilizes the whipped whites.

The step that matters

Baking the pudding until set but not watery. Egg proteins set with heat, so underbaking leaves the custard loose and watery, while overbaking makes it curdled and grainy. Watch for a set centre that still jiggles slightly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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