Skip to main content
Dessert

Coffee Custard Meringue

A custard made with milk, eggs, sugar, and coffee, topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and coffee are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,202 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Coffee Custard Meringue

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 meringues

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

  2. Whip the egg whites with a little powdered sugar until stiff peaks form.

  3. Heat the milk with a pinch of baking soda.

  4. Drop spoonfuls of meringue into the hot milk, turning them when the bottom is poached.

  5. Lift each meringue with a skimmer and place on a sieve to cool and drain.

Make the custard

  1. Once all meringues are done, pour the hot milk over the beaten yolks and sugar.

  2. Return the mixture to the heat and stir until it begins to thicken.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in the hot coffee.

Assemble and serve

  1. In a glass bowl, layer the meringues and pour the custard over them.

  2. Allow the meringues to rise to the surface, coated with custard.

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. Milk + coffeetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  2. Sugar + coffeetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard and whites form the stiff, airy meringue.
Milk
Forms the base of the custard and the liquid the meringues poach in.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps stabilize the whipped egg whites.
Strong brewed coffee
Adds coffee flavor and aroma to the custard.

The step that matters

Return the mixture to the heat and stir until it begins to thicken. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but overheating can curdle them into lumps. Stir constantly and remove from heat as soon as the custard coats a spoon.

“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

Coffee Ice CreamCoffee Ice Cream91 recipesCoffee CustardCoffee Custard27 recipesCoffee CakeCoffee Cake21 recipesCoffee Bavarian CreamCoffee Bavarian Cream14 recipes