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Dessert

Queen of Puddings

A baked bread pudding made with crumbs, milk, eggs, butter, sugar, lemon, topped with jelly and whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the base

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a large bowl, combine bread crumbs, milk, egg yolks, butter, sugar, and lemon zest or juice.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake until set.

Top and finish

  1. Spread jelly over the baked pudding.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites with a little sugar until stiff peaks form.

  3. Spread the beaten egg whites on top of the pudding.

  4. Return to the oven and brown slightly.

  5. Serve warm with sugar and 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. 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
Form the body of the pudding, absorbing the milk and egg to set into a soft custard.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the custard so it sets softly when baked.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form a stable meringue that browns on top.
Milk
Provides the liquid that softens the crumbs and forms the custard base.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture in the pudding.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Egg whites must be whipped fully with sugar to hold air and form a stable meringue; under-beaten whites collapse or weep, and over-baking can make the meringue tough or weepy.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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