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Dessert

Queen Pudding

A custard pudding with a meringue topping made from bread crumbs, milk, sugar, eggs, lemon, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 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

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

  2. Combine bread crumbs, milk, sugar, egg yolks, lemon rind, and butter in a bowl; mix well.

Make the custard

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake until set, like a custard.

Make and add the meringue

  1. Beat egg whites until stiff peaks form; gradually add 1 cup of sugar and lemon juice, continuing to beat until well combined.

  2. Spread the meringue over the baked custard and return to the oven.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake until the meringue is lightly browned.

  2. Serve warm or chilled.

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Provide the body that the milk and eggs set into.
Milk
Supplies liquid that the eggs set into a soft custard.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set, adding richness.
Egg whites
Whipped into stiff peaks to form the light meringue topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and the meringue.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother texture.

The step that matters

Baking the custard until set. Egg proteins set with heat, so the custard needs to firm before the meringue goes on. Underbaked custard stays runny, while overbaking makes it curdle and weep.

Swap the lemon

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

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

“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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