Skip to main content
Dessert

Queen of Puddings

A custard-like pudding made with bread crumbs, milk, butter, eggs, sugar, lemon, topped with jelly and meringue.

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.

Prepare the base

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

  2. In a bowl, beat the milk and butter together, then mix the milk and butter with the bread crumbs and let cool.

  3. Add the beaten egg yolks and sugar to the mixture, then add the lemon juice and rind.

  4. Pour the mixture into a baking pan and bake until set.

Top and finish

  1. Once baked, spread a thick layer of jelly on top.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until light, then gradually add the powdered sugar.

  3. Spread the egg white mixture over the jelly and lightly brown in the oven.

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 soaks up the milk and sets into a soft, custard-like base.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness so the base sets smooth.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form a light meringue that bakes into a crisp-tipped topping.
Milk
Forms the liquid that the crumbs absorb and the eggs set into custard.
Butter
Adds fat for a richer flavour and softer texture in the base.
White sugar
Sweetens the base and helps keep the custard tender.

The step that matters

Lightly browning the meringue. Egg whites whipped with sugar can weep or turn tough if overbaked, while underbaking leaves them soft. A brief, watched bake gives a lightly golden, stable topping.

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

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

  1. Vanillabetter flavor fit
  2. Figbetter flavor fit
  3. Peachabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Lemonthe original

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