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Dessert

Queen of Puddings

A coconut custard pudding made with cream, butter, sugar, lemon, eggs, milk, flour, and shredded coconut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Queen of Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Beat in the lemon juice and peel until very light.

  3. Add the beaten egg yolks, then the milk, alternating with the stiffened egg whites and flour.

  4. Fold in the shredded coconut.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in small tins until set.

  2. Serve fresh, but not warm.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Milk + coconuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

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

  5. Butter + coconuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving the pudding a light, tender crumb.
Egg whites
Stiffened and folded in to lift the batter and give structure as it sets.
Egg yolks
Enrich the batter and help it set into a tender custard-like texture.
Flour
Provides structure so the pudding holds its shape when baked and set.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps create a light, creamed texture with the butter.
Shredded coconut
Adds chewy texture and coconut flavour throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Folding in the stiffened egg whites. Egg whites hold air only while stiff, so folding gently preserves the volume that makes the pudding light. Overmixing deflates the foam and leaves a dense result.

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

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

  1. Vanillabetter flavor fit
  2. Raisinbetter flavor fit
  3. Figbetter flavor fit
  4. Lemonthe original

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