Skip to main content
Dessert

Meringue Pudding

A baked pudding made with milk, bread crumbs, butter, sugar, egg yolk, and topped with jelly and meringue.

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

Meringue Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the base

  1. Pour hot milk over bread crumbs, butter, and sugar.

  2. Let cool.

  3. Beat in the egg yolk.

  4. Bake in a shallow dish at 350°F (175°C) until set and pale brown.

Top and finish

  1. Spread jelly on top.

  2. Beat the egg white. Add castor sugar and lemon juice.

  3. Spread over the pudding.

  4. Return to the oven for a few minutes until firm.

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. Lemon + black curranttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together53 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  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

Bread crumbs
Soak up the hot milk and form the soft body of the pudding.
Egg yolk
Enriches and sets the custard base, adding richness and structure.
Egg white
Whipped with sugar to form a meringue that sets into a light, airy topping.
Castor sugar
Dissolves into the beaten egg white to stabilise the meringue and add sweetness.
Hot milk
Softens the bread crumbs and provides the liquid that sets into the custard.

The step that matters

Beat the egg white with sugar until firm. Egg white must be whipped to stiff peaks with sugar added gradually so it forms a stable foam; under-whipped or greasy whites will weep or collapse in the oven and fail to brown and hold the topping.

Swap the black currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Black currantthe original

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

More meringue pudding recipes

Lemon 32Apple 22Cream 9Chocolate 8Rice 5Cornstarch 4 See all 31 →

You might also like

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