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Dessert

Queen of Puddings

A bread pudding made with bread crumbs, milk, eggs, butter, sugar, lemon, jelly, and whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 of Puddings

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the pudding

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, combine bread crumbs, milk, egg yolks, butter, sugar, and lemon. Mix the mixture well.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish.

  4. Bake until set.

Top and finish

  1. Spread jelly over the baked pudding.

  2. Beat the egg whites with a little sugar until stiff peaks form. Spread the beaten egg whites on top of the pudding.

  3. Brown the egg whites slightly in the oven.

  4. Serve with sugar and cream.

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 milk and eggs to set into a soft custard.
Milk
Provides liquid that the eggs and crumbs set into a custard.
Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the custard so it sets softly.
Egg whites
Whipped into a meringue that adds lightness and browns on top.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.

The step that matters

Browning the egg white topping. Beaten whites can deflate or brown unevenly if overbaked; a brief oven stay at high heat only lightly colours the meringue, so watch it closely while the custard underneath stays set.

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

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

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Apple 145Chocolate 53Brown 51Fruit 44Lemon 37Steamed 29 See all 1,021 →

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