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Dessert

Lemon Meringue Pudding

A custard pudding made with milk, bread crumbs, sugar, butter, egg yolks, lemon juice and rind, topped with meringue.

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 ↓

Lemon Meringue Pudding

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.

Make the custard base

  1. Scald the milk and pour it over the bread crumbs.

  2. Let the mixture stand for 30 minutes.

  3. Stir in the sugar, butter, egg yolks, lemon juice, and grated lemon rind, then mix well.

Bake and brown

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered pudding dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) until just set.

  2. Remove from the oven and cover with beaten egg whites mixed with sugar and lemon juice.

  3. Return to the oven and brown the meringue.

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

Bread crumbs
Soak up the hot milk and give the pudding a soft, sponge-like body.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the bread absorbs and the eggs set within, keeping the pudding moist.
Egg yolks
Set during baking to thicken the custard and add richness.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form a light, airy meringue that browns on top.
Butter
Adds fat for a richer, more tender texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Bake until just set. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but past that point they tighten and curdle, leaving the custard grainy and watery. Pulling it out once it is just set keeps it smooth and tender.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, bread, 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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