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Dessert

Queen of Puddings

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

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

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make 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 flavoring.

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

Add the topping and finish

  1. Spread jelly over the baked mixture.

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

  3. Spread the beaten egg whites on top of the jelly layer.

  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. 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 bulk of the pudding and soak up the milk and eggs to set into a soft body.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard base and help it set when baked.
Egg whites
Whip into stiff peaks to form a light meringue topping that browns in the oven.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the bread absorbs and that the egg yolks set into custard.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture in the baked base.

The step that matters

Brown the meringue only slightly. Egg whites beaten with sugar form a foam that can overbake quickly, turning tough, weepy, or dark. A brief return to the oven is enough to lightly colour the peaks while the layers below stay soft.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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