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Dessert

The Queen of Puddings

A lemony bread pudding topped with jelly and whipped egg mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 27,232 recipes mention both. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

The 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.

Prepare

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

  2. Mix together bread crumbs, milk, sugar, egg yolks, butter, and lemon rind.

Bake and top

  1. Bake until set, but do not let it become watery.

  2. Spread a layer of jelly on top.

  3. Whip the egg white with sugar and lemon juice until stiff.

  4. Spread the whipped mixture on top and brown in the oven.

Serve

  1. Serve with Hard Sauce or enjoy cold.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned 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

Bread crumbs
Form the body of the pudding, soaking up the milk and eggs to set into a soft custard.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and enrich it, helping it set when baked.
Milk
Provides the liquid that softens the crumbs and forms the custard base.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and, in the topping, helps the whipped egg white hold its stiff shape.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, tender texture in the custard.
Egg (for topping)
Whipped whites form a light meringue that sets and browns on top.

The step that matters

Bake until set, but do not let it become watery. Egg proteins in the custard coagulate with heat; underbaking leaves it runny, while overbaking squeezes out liquid and makes it weep and turn watery.

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

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

  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 bread, milk, sugar, egg, butter. 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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