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Dessert

Queen of Puddings

A bread pudding made with milk, sugar, eggs, butter, topped with jelly, meringue, and optional hard sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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.

Make the custard base

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

  2. Combine bread crumbs, milk, sugar, egg yolks, and butter in a bowl. Mix well.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake until set, but do not let it become watery.

Top and brown

  1. Spread a layer of jelly on top once baked.

  2. In a separate bowl, whip egg whites until stiff. Gradually add 5 tablespoons of sugar and lemon juice, then spread over the pudding.

  3. Return to the oven and brown the meringue.

Make the hard sauce and serve

  1. For the hard sauce, beat together light brown sugar, butter, grated lemon rind, and lemon juice until light and fluffy.

  2. Serve warm or cold, with or without hard sauce.

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 + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  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
Form the body of the pudding, soaking up milk to set into a soft, tender base.
Egg yolks
Bind the custard and help it set firm while staying creamy.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the bread crumbs absorb and that the eggs set into custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the meringue stay stable and browned.
Egg whites
Whipped into a meringue that gives a light, browned topping.

The step that matters

Bake until set, not watery. Egg yolks set as they heat, but overbaking can curdle and weep liquid, while underbaking leaves a runny custard. Pulling it once just set keeps the texture smooth and moist.

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, sugar, egg, butter, sauce):

  1. Vanillabetter flavor fit
  2. Figbetter flavor fit
  3. Peachabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, sugar, egg, butter, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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