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Dessert

Queens Pudding

A bread crumb pudding with milk, sugar, lemon, jam, and meringue topping.

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 ↓

Queens Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA good oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a good oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the pudding base

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

  2. In a large bowl, combine bread crumbs, milk, sugar, lemon rind, lemon extract, butter, and salt.

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

Top and finish

  1. Spread a layer of jam over the top.

  2. Whip the egg whites until stiff peaks form and spread over the jam.

  3. Return to the oven and bake until the meringue is golden.

  4. Serve hot or 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 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. Bread + milktop 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

Bread crumbs
Soak up the milk and form the soft, tender body of the pudding.
Milk
Provides liquid that sets with the egg and crumbs into a custard-like texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the meringue brown when baked.
Whites of 2 eggs
Whipped into a foam that forms the light, golden meringue topping.
Jam
Adds sweet fruit flavour and a layer between the pudding and meringue.

The step that matters

Whip the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Egg whites must be whipped until they hold stiff peaks, because a loose foam will collapse and bake flat or weepy. Clean, grease-free bowls and whites help them whip to full volume.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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