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Dessert

Queen of Puddings

A sweet pudding made with bread crumbs, milk, sugar, eggs, butter, topped with currant jelly and meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

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

  2. In a bowl, combine bread crumbs, sweet milk, sugar, egg yolks, and butter.

  3. Pour the mixture into a buttered dish, filling it two-thirds full.

Top and bake

  1. Bake until set and lightly browned.

  2. Spread a layer of currant jelly over the top.

  3. Beat the egg whites until stiff, gradually adding 1 cup sugar.

  4. Spread the meringue over the pudding and brown in the oven.

Serve

  1. Serve hot or cold.

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 + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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 give the custard body and a soft structure.
Sweet milk
Provides the liquid that the eggs set into a custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps stabilise the beaten egg whites.
Egg yolks
Thicken and set the custard, adding richness.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that forms the meringue topping and browns in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother texture in the custard.

The step that matters

Bake until set and lightly browned. Egg yolks set with gentle heat. Overbaking makes the custard tough and grainy and can make it weep liquid, so check for a set centre rather than baking for a fixed time.

Flavor stand-ins for the currant

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

  1. Vanillabetter flavor fit
  2. Figbetter flavor fit
  3. Peachbetter flavor fit
  4. Currantthe 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. 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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