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Dessert

Meringue Pudding

A pudding made with warm milk, grated bread, eggs, sugar, butter, lemon, and meringue topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Gibson, Marietta Fauntleroy Hollyday, "Mrs. C. H. Gibson." · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Meringue Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding base

  1. Pour one quart of warm milk over a pint of grated bread.

  2. Add the yolks of four eggs well beaten, one cup of sugar, a small piece of butter, and the rind of one lemon.

  3. Put the mixture to bake.

Make and spread the meringue

  1. Beat the whites of the eggs quite light.

  2. Add to the whites one and a half cups of sugar and the juice of the lemon.

  3. Spread this meringue on the pudding when it is cool.

  4. Put the pudding in the oven and let it brown a little.

  5. Add a layer of stewed apples or preserves between the pudding and the meringue before replacing in the oven.

Make the meringue shells

  1. Beat the whites of nine eggs very stiff.

  2. Beat one pound of granulated sugar into the eggs.

  3. Prepare boards that fit in the oven.

  4. Cover the boards with paper that is thoroughly wet, never greased.

  5. Put the egg and sugar mixture into little forms about the size and shape of a goose egg.

  6. Place the forms on the boards and put them into a moderately warm oven, and let them cook until they are a delicate brown.

  7. If you have a tin oven, put them into that; if not, open the oven doors for an hour or two until the outside is quite hard.

  8. Remove them from the paper, and scrape out gently all the soft inside, which can be used again.

  9. Put the shells to dry in the oven.

  10. When the inside is thoroughly dry, take them out, fit them together two and two, and put them in a stone jar.

  11. They will keep some time if air-tight.

  12. When ready to be eaten, fill them with whipped cream, sweetened and flavored, or with ice cream.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

845Calories
28 gProtein
26 gFat
124 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 6 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Lemonjuice of 1 lemon (48ml)12

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Gibson, Marietta Fauntleroy Hollyday, "Mrs. C. H. Gibson.". 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. See the original page.

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
Softens the bread and forms the moist custard base of the pudding.
Bread
Absorbs the milk and eggs to give the pudding its soft, body-filled texture.
Eggs
Set the custard through their proteins and make the light, stiff meringue foam.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and stabilizes the whipped egg whites in the meringue.
Lemon
Adds aroma from the rind and acidity from the juice to brighten the dish.

The step that matters

Beat the whites very stiff before adding the sugar. Egg whites must be whipped to firm peaks so they trap air and hold their shape; under-beaten whites collapse, and adding sugar gradually keeps the foam stable.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

More meringue pudding recipes

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