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Dessert

Queen Pudding

A baked milk and breadcrumb pudding topped with jam and meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Queen Pudding

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 the custard base

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

  2. In a large bowl, combine milk, breadcrumbs, sugar, egg yolks, lemon rind, and butter.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake until set and not watery.

Top and finish

  1. Spread a layer of jelly or jam over the pudding.

  2. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff, then gradually add 1 cup of sugar and lemon juice.

  3. Pour the meringue over the jam and return to the oven to brown slightly.

  4. Serve cold without 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the breadcrumbs and yolks set into a custard.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb the milk and give the pudding its body and soft crumb.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set during baking, giving a rich texture.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form a stable meringue that browns in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and, dissolved into the whites, stabilises the meringue.

The step that matters

Bake the custard until set and not watery. Underbaking leaves the custard loose and wet, so the jam and meringue sink into it. Egg proteins set with heat, so the base must firm before the topping is added.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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