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Dessert

Queen of Puddings

A lemon-flavored bread pudding 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.

Prepare the pudding base

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

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

  3. Bake until set but not watery.

Make the meringue and finish

  1. In another bowl, whip the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Gradually beat in ½ teacup of sugar mixed with lemon juice.

  3. Once the pudding is cool, spread a layer of jelly on top.

  4. Spread the whipped egg whites over the jelly and return to the oven to brown slightly.

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 milk to create a soft, custard-like structure.
Milk
Provides liquid that bread crumbs absorb and that the eggs set into a custard.
Egg yolks
Set the custard when baked, giving the pudding its richness and firm texture.
Egg whites
Whipped into a stiff foam that forms the topping, which browns in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, smooth texture in the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the whipped whites hold their stable foam.

The step that matters

Baking the pudding base until set but not watery. Underbaked custard stays runny and soaks the bread, while overbaking makes egg proteins tighten and weep liquid. Check for a firm center that is not wet.

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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