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Dessert

Queen Pudding

A sweet bread pudding with jam and meringue topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the custard base

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Place the bread crumbs in a bowl, grate the lemon rind over them, and add the butter.

  3. Pour the boiling milk over the mixture and let it cool for a few minutes.

  4. Beat in the egg yolks and sugar, then transfer the mixture to a greased pie dish.

Bake and top

  1. Bake in a moderate oven (350 °F/175 °C) until set.

  2. Remove from the oven, spread jam over the top, and pile the stiffly beaten egg whites on the jam.

  3. Return to the oven for a few minutes to set the meringue.

  4. Sift caster sugar over the top and serve.

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
Form the body of the pudding and soak up the warm milk to make a soft base.
Milk
Softens the crumbs and sets with the egg to give the custard its moist, tender texture.
Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard as it bakes, while whites whip into the meringue that tops the pudding.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the custard a softer, more tender crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the meringue stay glossy and stable.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites for the meringue. Whites must be stiffly beaten so they hold air and rise into a light meringue. Any trace of yolk or grease can stop them whipping, leaving a flat, weeping topping.

Swap the lemon

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

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

“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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