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Dessert

Queen of Puddings, The, with Bread-crumbs

A custard-like pudding made with milk, eggs, sugar, bread crumbs, lemon juice, butter, and topped with jam.

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, The, with Bread-crumbs

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

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

  2. In a saucepan, heat the milk until warm. Stir in the bread crumbs and let them soak for 10 minutes.

Make the pudding

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs and sugar together until light.

  2. Add the lemon juice, butter, and salt to the egg mixture.

  3. Combine the soaked bread mixture with the egg mixture.

  4. Pour into a greased baking dish and bake for 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Top with jam or fruit preserves before serving.

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. Sugar + fruit preservetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together37 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Milk + breadtop 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

Eggs
Bind the mixture and set into a custard-like texture as they bake.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the warm milk and give the pudding its body.
Milk
Hydrates the bread crumbs and provides moisture for a tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the beaten eggs become light.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, more tender crumb.

The step that matters

Pour into a greased baking dish and bake for 30 minutes. Eggs set as they heat, so baking too long or too hot can make the pudding curdled or dry. Greasing the dish keeps the pudding from sticking.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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