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Dessert

Lemon Meringue Pudding

A baked 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 lemon rind. Mix well.

  4. Pour the mixture into a buttered pudding dish.

Bake and top with meringue

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until just set.

  2. Remove the pudding from the oven.

  3. Cover with beaten egg whites mixed with sugar and flavored with lemon.

  4. Return the pudding to the oven.

  5. Bake until the meringue is lightly browned.

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 softens the bread and sets into a tender custard.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the milk and give the pudding a soft, light body.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the custard as they set in the oven.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that bakes into a light, airy meringue topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the meringue brown and stay glossy.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright flavor that balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Bake the pudding only until just set, before adding the meringue. Egg custard keeps setting as it cools and overbaking makes it curdled and watery. Stopping at just set leaves a tender texture, and the second bake then browns the meringue without overcooking the base.

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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