Skip to main content
Dessert

Queen of Puddings

A bread crumb pudding topped with meringue, served with cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 pudding

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

  2. In a large bowl, mix the bread crumbs, milk, egg yolks, butter, sugar, and lemon rind until well combined.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake until set.

Top and serve

  1. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until soft peaks form, then gradually add the powdered sugar and continue beating until stiff peaks form.

  2. If desired, spread a layer of jelly or preserves on the pudding before adding the meringue.

  3. Spread the meringue over the baked pudding and brown it in the oven.

  4. Serve with cream 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Forms the body of the pudding and soaks up the milk to make it tender.
Milk
Provides the liquid that moistens the crumbs and sets into a soft custard.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set in the oven, giving it a rich, smooth texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, more tender crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard base and balances the tart lemon rind.

The step that matters

Beat the meringue to stiff peaks. Whipped egg whites trap air in a foam that holds the topping up. Adding sugar gradually dissolves into the whites and stabilizes the foam. Under-beaten whites can weep or collapse in the oven.

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

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

  1. Vanillabetter flavor fit
  2. Figbetter flavor fit
  3. Coconutbetter flavor fit
  4. Lemonthe original

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

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes