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Dessert

Queen Pudding

A banana pudding made with suet, bread crumbs, custard, and baked or steamed.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix together the chopped suet, bread crumbs, and chopped bananas.

  2. Put the mixture into a greased basin.

Make the custard

  1. In a separate bowl, make a boiled custard by whisking together the milk, eggs, sugar, and essence of lemon.

  2. Pour the custard into the basin over the mixture.

Cook and serve

  1. Steam or boil for 1 hour.

  2. Turn out and serve with sweet or whipped 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 + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Banana + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,470 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Banana + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,134 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Adds fat that enriches the pudding and keeps it moist as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the custard and give the pudding its body and structure.
Bananas
Add natural sweetness and a soft, moist texture with banana flavour.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, adding moisture and softness.
Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, binding the pudding together.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and adds to its flavour and tender texture.

The step that matters

Steaming or boiling the pudding. The pudding must cook gently and fully so the egg custard sets through without curdling or turning watery in the middle, while the suet stays moist.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Bananathe original

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