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Dessert

Meringue Pudding

A pudding made from soaked bread crumbs, milk, egg yolks, sugar, butter, and topped with acid fruit and meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

Prepare the base

  1. Soak the bread crumbs in the milk.

  2. Beat the egg yolks and add 1 cup of sugar.

  3. Melt the butter and mix it with the soaked bread crumbs.

  4. Combine the milk, bread mixture, and egg yolk mixture, then bake until set.

Top and finish

  1. Spread the pudding lightly with the acid fruit.

  2. Whip the egg whites to stiff peaks and gradually add the remaining 1 cup of sugar.

  3. Spread the whipped egg whites over the fruit and bake until light brown.

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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Milk + grapetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,682 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  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
Absorb the milk and give the pudding its body and soft crumb.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set, giving the pudding structure and richness.
Milk
Provides the liquid that sets with the eggs into a custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and the meringue, and stabilizes the whipped egg whites.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that bakes into a light, browned meringue topping.
Acid fruit
Adds tartness that balances the sweetness of the custard and meringue.

The step that matters

Whip the egg whites to stiff peaks and add the sugar gradually. Sugar added slowly to whipped egg whites dissolves and stabilizes the foam. Under-whipped or greasy whites will collapse or weep, so the meringue will not hold its shape or brown evenly.

Swap the grape

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Grapethe original

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