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Dessert

Queen of Pudding

A baked milk pudding with bread crumbs, eggs, sugar, topped with crabapple jelly and icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Queen of Pudding

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. Beat the egg yolks and 1 cup of sugar together.

  3. Add the milk and bread crumbs to the mixture.

  4. Pour into a well-greased pudding dish and bake until firm.

Top and brown

  1. Remove from the oven and cover with thin slices of crabapple jelly.

  2. Make icing by beating the egg whites with 1 cup of sugar, then spread it over the jelly.

  3. Return to the oven and let 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. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes: they 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

Eggs
Yolks set the custard and egg whites whip into the icing topping.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and give the pudding body and a soft, tender texture.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the bread crumbs soak up and that the eggs set in.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and icing and helps the egg-white icing brown.
Crabapple jelly
Adds tart fruit flavor and a glossy layer beneath the icing.

The step that matters

Returning to the oven to brown. Egg-white icing browns quickly at high sugar content, so it can scorch if left unwatched. Watch closely and stop once it is golden, since the pudding underneath is already cooked.

“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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