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Dessert

Queen of Puddings

A baked pudding made with egg yolks, sugar, butter, bread crumbs, milk, lemon, topped with jelly or preserves and meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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

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 custard base

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks, 1 cup of sugar, butter, bread crumbs, milk, and grated lemon.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake until set but not watery.

Top and finish

  1. Spread a layer of jelly or preserves over the top.

  2. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  3. Gradually add the remaining ½ cup of sugar and lemon, then spread this over the jelly layer.

  4. Return to the oven and bake until the top is lightly browned.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 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. Egg + breadtop 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

Eggs
Yolks enrich and set the custard, while whites are beaten into a meringue topping.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and give the custard body and a soft, tender structure.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the eggs set into a creamy custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and, dissolved into the whites, stabilises the meringue topping.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, more tender crumb in the custard.

The step that matters

Baking the custard until set but not watery. Underbaking leaves the egg custard runny and wet, while overbaking makes it curdle and weep. Stop when the centre barely jiggles so the custard sets smoothly.

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

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

  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 egg, sugar, butter, bread, milk. 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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