Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Meringue Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with milk, bread crumbs, eggs, lemon, and topped with a sweet meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Lemon Meringue Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the custard base

  1. Heat the milk to boiling.

  2. Pour the hot milk over the bread crumbs.

  3. Cream the butter and ½ cup sugar together.

  4. Stir in the milk mixture.

  5. Add the egg yolks and lemon juice, mixing well.

  6. Pour the mixture into a buttered pudding dish.

Make the meringue and bake

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until firm but not watery.

  2. Whip the egg whites until stiff.

  3. Gradually add the remaining ½ cup sugar and a little lemon juice.

  4. Spread the meringue over the pudding.

  5. Brown in the oven until lightly golden.

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. Milk + breadtop 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that sets into a soft, custardy pudding when baked.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the hot milk to give the pudding body and a tender crumb.
Eggs
Egg yolks thicken and set the custard; whipped whites form the light meringue topping.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that softens the crumb and carries flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and, when whipped into the whites, stabilises the meringue.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps keep the meringue stable.

The step that matters

Bake until firm but not watery. Underbaking leaves the egg-thickened custard loose and watery, while overbaking can make it curdle or weep. The custard needs to be set before the meringue goes on.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes