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Dessert

Viennoise Pudding

A bread pudding made with raisins, lemon zest, milk, eggs, and browned 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

  1. Cut the bread into small dice.

  2. In a pan, brown 1 tablespoon of sugar over medium heat.

  3. In a bowl, combine the bread, raisins, remaining sugar, and lemon zest.

  4. Beat the eggs in a separate bowl.

Make the mixture

  1. Pour the milk into the pan to dissolve the browned sugar.

  2. Add the milk mixture to the dry ingredients.

Steam

  1. Butter and sugar a pudding mold.

  2. Pour the mixture into the mold.

  3. Cover with buttered paper.

  4. Steam for 2 hours.

Serve

  1. 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. Raisin + sugartop 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

Bread
Provides the structure that soaks up the milk and sets into a soft pudding.
Eggs
Set when heated, binding the bread and milk into a sliceable custard.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that moistens the bread and carries the browned sugar flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness, and browning it adds caramel flavor to the milk.
Sultana raisins
Add sweetness and chewy pockets throughout the pudding.
Lemon zest
Adds bright citrus aroma that balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Browning the sugar. Sugar darkens quickly and can turn bitter or burn if left too long over heat. Stop when it is deep golden, then add the milk, which stops the browning and dissolves the caramel into a flavorful base.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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