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Dessert

Strawberry Pudding

A custard and meringue layered strawberry pudding made with stale bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk 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 ↓

Strawberry Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pudding

  1. Line a bowl or mold with thin slices of stale bread.

  2. Pour hot stewed strawberries into the lined bowl.

  3. If using fresh strawberries, make them very sweet; if canned, add ½ cup sugar.

  4. Set aside to cool.

Make the custard and serve

  1. Turn the pudding out into a glass dish without disturbing its shape.

  2. Pour steamed custard made from 1 pint milk, 3 or 4 egg yolks, and ⅔ cup sugar around the pudding.

  3. Top with a meringue made from beaten egg whites and 3 tablespoons powdered sugar.

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 + milktop 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 + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Stale bread
Forms the structure that holds the strawberries in a molded shape.
Strawberries
Supply the fruit flavour, moisture and most of the pudding's body.
Sugar
Sweetens the strawberries and the custard, balancing the fruit's acidity.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set with gentle heat.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that gives the meringue its light, airy texture.

The step that matters

Turning the pudding out. The bread-lined shape is soft and moist, so it can break if handled roughly. Letting the strawberries cool first helps them firm and hold their form when inverted.

“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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