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Dessert

Lucy Stone's Bread Meringue

A sweet dessert made from bread crumbs, milk, sugar, eggs, lemon, and butter, topped with a 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 ↓

Lucy Stone's Bread Meringue

Oven, in the book's wordsA very cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the base

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

  2. In a bowl, combine bread crumbs, sweet milk, brown sugar, beaten egg yolks, grated lemon rind, and butter.

  3. Bake until firm.

Top and serve

  1. Remove from the oven and top with beaten egg whites mixed with powdered sugar and lemon juice.

  2. Return to the oven and lightly brown the top.

  3. Serve cold, with or without fruit or cream.

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. 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
Form the body of the pudding, soaking up the milk to create a soft, set base.
Egg yolks
Enrich the base and help it set firm when baked.
Egg whites
Whip into the topping that puffs up and lightly browns in the oven.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the meringue topping and helps stabilise the whipped whites.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture in the base.

The step that matters

Topping the base with egg whites. Egg whites need to be beaten to a stable foam before topping; under-whipped whites will deflate and weep, and the top will not brown evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

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