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Dessert

Queen of Puddings

A sweet bread crumb pudding topped with meringue and jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 custard

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

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

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and 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 the teacup of sugar and the strained lemon juice.

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

  4. Return to the oven and brown slightly.

  5. Serve cold, with cream if desired.

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
Absorb the milk and set into a soft, tender custard base.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and enrich it as it sets.
Egg whites
Whip into a stiff foam that forms the meringue topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and, dissolved into the whites, stabilises the meringue.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the crumbs soak up and the eggs set in.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet custard and helps stabilise the meringue.

The step that matters

Bake the custard until set but not watery. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but underbaking leaves a runny layer that makes the meringue soggy and the pudding weep, while overbaking turns the custard grainy.

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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