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Dessert

Queen Pudding

A baked pudding made from bread crumbs, milk, sugar, egg yolks, lemon rind, butter, raisins, 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 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.

Make the base

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

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

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

Add the topping

  1. Whip the egg whites to stiff peaks, then mix in the teacup of sugar and lemon juice.

  2. Spread a thin layer of jelly over the pudding, then top with the meringue.

  3. Return to the oven until the meringue is light 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. 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. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (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 give the pudding its soft, body-filled structure.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set when baked.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs and crumbs set into a custard.
Egg whites
Whipped into a stiff foam that forms the light, airy meringue topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and, in the meringue, stabilises the whipped whites.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, smooth texture in the custard.

The step that matters

Whip the egg whites to stiff peaks. Under-whipped whites collapse and weep, while over-whipped whites turn grainy and dry. Stiff peaks hold the meringue's air, so it stays light and browns evenly in the oven.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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