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Dessert

Dixie Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with milk, bread crumbs, sugar, eggs, and lemon zest and juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Dixie 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.

Prepare the base

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

  2. Separate the egg whites from the yolks.

  3. In a bowl, mix the yolks with 4 tablespoons of sugar.

  4. Add the bread crumbs, milk, and grated lemon rind to the yolk mixture.

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

Make the icing and finish

  1. In another bowl, beat the egg whites with the remaining sugar and lemon juice until light.

  2. Once the pudding is nearly cold, spread the icing on top.

  3. Return to the oven and bake until the icing 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. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks enrich and set the custard, while whites are beaten into the topping for lightness.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and give the pudding its body and soft structure.
Milk
Provides the liquid that sets with the eggs and crumbs into a custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and, beaten with egg whites, helps form the icing.

The step that matters

Baking the pudding until set. Underbaked custard stays runny and will not hold up under the icing, while overbaking makes eggs curdle and turn grainy. Watch for a set centre that still looks slightly soft.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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