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Dessert

Viennoise Pudding

A bread pudding with candied peel, raisins, lemon, milk, eggs, and sugar, steamed and served with custard sauce.

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

Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Viennoise Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Combine the diced bread, candied peel, sultana raisins, and grated lemon rind in a basin.

  2. Heat 1 tablespoon of sugar in a small saucepan until it turns brown.

  3. Add the milk and stir until hot.

  4. Pour the hot milk over the bread mixture.

  5. Add the remaining sugar.

  6. Beat the eggs well.

  7. Stir the beaten eggs into the mixture along with the lemon juice.

Mould and steam

  1. Butter the mold.

  2. Dust the mold with sugar.

  3. Add a few cherries at the bottom for decoration.

  4. Pour the pudding mixture into the mold.

  5. Cover with buttered paper.

  6. Steam for one hour.

Unmould and serve

  1. Unmold the pudding.

  2. Serve with custard 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Raisin + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and set into a firm, sliceable pudding when steamed.
Bread
Forms the body of the pudding and soaks up the hot milk and egg.
Milk
Softens the bread and adds moisture, so the pudding steams tender.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and, when browned, adds caramel flavour.
Sultana raisins
Add chewy sweetness and pockets of fruit flavour throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Heat the sugar until brown. Sugar that darkens too far turns bitter, while pale sugar gives little caramel flavour. Watch it closely and stop once it is a deep amber brown.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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