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Dessert

Queen of Puddings

A custard made from bread crumbs, milk, sugar, eggs, and lemon, topped with jelly and meringue.

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the custard

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

  2. In a large bowl, combine bread crumbs, milk, 1 cup sugar, egg yolks, lemon rind, and butter.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake until set, about 30-40 minutes.

Top and bake

  1. Spread jelly over the top of the baked custard.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat egg whites until stiff peaks form, then gradually add 1 cup sugar and lemon juice.

  3. Spread the meringue over the jelly and brown lightly in the oven.

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
Soak up the milk and egg to form a soft, sliceable custard base.
Egg yolks
Set the custard and add richness and structure to the base.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form a stable meringue that browns in the oven.
Milk
Provides the liquid that sets with the eggs into a tender custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and, dissolved into the whites, stabilizes the meringue.

The step that matters

Gradually adding sugar to the egg whites. Adding sugar slowly while beating helps the whites form stable, glossy peaks that hold up over the jelly. Adding it too fast or late can leave the meringue weeping or flat.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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