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Dessert

Queen of Puddings

A baked pudding made with bread crumbs, raisins, eggs, milk, and sugar, topped with jelly and frosted with beaten egg whites.

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 ↓

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

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

  2. In a large bowl, combine the bread crumbs, egg yolks, sugar, milk, chopped raisins, and spices.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish.

Bake

  1. Stir while baking, then bake until set and lightly browned.

Top and frost

  1. Spread jelly on top.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  3. Spread the egg whites over the jelly as frosting.

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. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

  4. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  5. Bread + raisintop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,111 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Soak up the custard and give the pudding its body.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as it bakes, enriching the texture.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that sets with the eggs into a custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the surface brown in the oven.
Egg whites
Beaten to stiff peaks, they form a light, airy frosting.

The step that matters

Bake until just set and lightly browned. Egg proteins set as they heat, so the pudding should be removed once it is firm at the center. Overbaking makes the eggs curdle and the custard dry and grainy.

Flavor stand-ins for the raisin

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

  1. Vanillabetter flavor fit
  2. Figbetter flavor fit
  3. Datesabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Raisinthe original

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