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Dessert

Piccolimini Pudding

A baked milk and bread crumb pudding flavored with lemon and topped with jelly and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Piccolimini Pudding

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 pudding base

  1. Scald the milk in the baking pan.

  2. Add bread crumbs, sugar, beaten egg yolks, lemon rind, and butter to the milk.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 to 45 minutes.

Top and serve

  1. Whip the egg whites until stiff, then mix in sugar and lemon juice.

  2. Spread jelly over the baked pudding, then cover with icing and bake lightly.

  3. Serve cold with 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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 hot milk to set into a soft custard.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set as it bakes.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks to create a light, airy meringue topping.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the bread crumbs soak up and the eggs set into custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps stabilize the whipped egg white topping.

The step that matters

Whipping the egg whites until stiff. Egg whites must be beaten until they hold stiff peaks, and any trace of fat or yolk will stop them from whipping properly. Stiff whites trap air that gives the topping its light structure.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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