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Dessert

Queen Pudding

A baked bread crumb pudding with lemon, butter, eggs, milk, and topped with jelly and meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the custard

  1. Soak the bread crumbs in the milk.

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  3. Beat in the egg yolks, then add the lemon juice and grated rind.

  4. Stir all ingredients together and pour into a baking dish.

Bake and top

  1. Bake for about 30 minutes in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C).

  2. Spread a layer of jelly over the top of the pudding once cooked.

  3. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth and add the powdered sugar.

  4. Arrange the meringue over the pudding and brown in the oven.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Walnut + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk to form the soft, set body of the pudding.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the custard as it bakes.
Egg whites
Whipped into a stiff foam to form the meringue topping that browns in the oven.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the crumbs soak up and the eggs set into custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the meringue brown.
Butter
Adds richness and fat for a tender texture.

The step that matters

Arranging the meringue and browning it in the oven. Egg whites must be whipped to a stiff froth with sugar so the meringue holds its shape. Browning should be watched closely, since the sugar in the meringue can scorch before the topping is fully colored.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits about as well
  2. Peasfits about as well
  3. Pecansfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, butter, egg, milk, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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