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Dessert

Queen of Puddings

A custard-like pudding made with milk, bread crumbs, egg yolks, and lemon, topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

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

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

  2. In a large bowl, combine milk, bread crumbs, egg yolks, sugar, butter, lemon rind, and lemon juice.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake until set.

Make the meringue and finish

  1. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then gradually add the remaining sugar and lemon juice.

  2. Spread the meringue over the baked pudding and return to the oven until golden brown.

  3. Optionally, spread currant jelly over the pudding before adding the meringue or drizzle it on top after browning.

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. Milk + breadtop 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

Milk
Provides the liquid that the eggs set into a soft, creamy custard.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the milk and give the pudding body and structure.
Egg yolks
Set the custard and add richness and a smooth texture.
Egg whites
Whipped into stiff peaks, they form the light, airy meringue topping.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the beaten egg whites hold their peaks.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Bake the pudding until just set. The eggs keep setting as the custard cools, so overbaking makes it grainy and weepy. Stop when the centre barely wobbles.

Flavor stand-ins for the currant

The recipe marks currant as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, bread, egg, sugar, butter, lemon):

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

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