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Dessert

Queen of Puddings

A sweet milk-based pudding with bread crumbs, sugar, lemon, egg yolks, butter, topped with cherry preserves and 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 custard

  1. Scald the milk and pour it over the bread crumbs.

  2. Stir in the beaten egg yolks, sugar, lemon juice and rind, and butter.

  3. Bake in a dish at 350°F (175°C) until well set but not watery.

  4. Let cool.

Top and brown

  1. Spread a layer of cherry preserves on top.

  2. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth with the powdered sugar.

  3. Spread the meringue over the pudding and brown.

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. Lemon + cherrytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Milk + cherrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together851 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Soak up the hot milk to form the body of the pudding.
Egg yolks
Set the custard and give it a rich, smooth texture.
Milk
Provides the liquid that sets with the eggs into a custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the meringue stay glossy.
Cherry preserves
Add fruity sweetness and acidity beneath the meringue.

The step that matters

Bake until well set but not watery. Egg yolks set as they heat, but overbaking can make the custard grainy and underbaking leaves it runny and watery, so the pudding needs to be firm enough to hold its shape.

Flavor stand-ins for the cherry

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, bread, sugar, lemon, 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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