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Dessert

Queen of Puddings

A baked bread pudding made with milk, sugar, eggs, lemon rind, butter, 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 pudding

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

  2. In a bowl, combine bread crumbs, milk, sugar, egg yolks, lemon rind, and butter. Mix well.

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

Top and bake the meringue

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

  2. Beat egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  3. Gradually add 1 cup of sugar and lemon juice while continuing to beat until well combined.

  4. Spread the meringue over the jelly layer and return to the oven.

  5. Bake until the meringue is lightly browned, about 10-15 minutes.

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, soaking up the milk and eggs to set into a soft custard.
Egg yolks
Bind the pudding and enrich it, helping it set when baked.
Egg whites
Whipped into a stiff foam that forms the light, browned meringue topping.
Milk
Provides the liquid that softens the crumbs and forms the custard base.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and, when whipped with the whites, stabilises the meringue.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture in the pudding.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to stiff peaks. Egg whites must be whipped until stiff and the sugar added gradually so the foam holds its shape and bakes into a stable, lightly browned meringue instead of weeping or collapsing.

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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