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Dessert

Queen of Puddings

A custard-like pudding made with eggs, sugar, butter, milk, bread crumbs, raisins, lemon extract, and topped with currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the custard base

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Soak the bread crumbs in the milk.

  3. In a bowl, beat 2 whole eggs and the yolks of 4 eggs with the sugar and butter until smooth.

  4. Add the soaked bread crumbs, raisins, and lemon extract; mix well.

  5. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake for 1 hour.

Top and finish

  1. Once done, spread the top with currant jelly and top with the beaten egg whites.

  2. Return to the oven and bake until the egg whites are set and 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. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard and, as whipped whites, form the light topping.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the milk to give the custard body and a soft, pudding-like crumb.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the eggs set into a custard.
White sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the meringue topping brown.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender texture to the custard.

The step that matters

Baking the meringue topping until just set. Egg whites set and brown quickly at oven heat. Baking too long can make the meringue weep or toughen, while underbaking leaves it wet and soft.

Flavor stand-ins for the currant

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

  1. Vanillabetter flavor fit
  2. Figbetter flavor fit
  3. Applebetter flavor fit
  4. Currantthe original

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