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Dessert

Queen of Puddings

A custard-like pudding made with milk, butter, bread crumbs, lemon rind, eggs, sugar, and raspberry jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 custard base

  1. Boil the milk with the butter.

  2. Pour in the bread crumbs and let it soak for a few minutes.

  3. Add the egg yolks, sugar, and grated lemon rind.

  4. Pour the mixture into a buttered pie dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

Top and finish

  1. Remove from the oven and spread with raspberry jam.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff and spread over the top.

  3. Sprinkle with sugar and bake until pale brown.

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. Butter + breadtop 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. Lemon + raspberrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,109 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Milk + raspberrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,014 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks set the custard and thicken it, while whites form the crisp meringue topping.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the hot milk to form the body of the custard.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that sets into a soft custard when baked.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the meringue stay glossy and brown.
Raspberry jam
Adds fruity sweetness and acidity in a layer between custard and meringue.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites until stiff. Whites must be beaten until they hold firm peaks, because the air they trap gives the meringue its volume. Under-beaten whites weep and collapse, while over-beaten whites turn dry and grainy.

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

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

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

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

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