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Dessert

Lemon Meringue

A sponge cake soaked in lemon custard topped with whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,053 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Meringue

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Soak the cake

  1. Arrange the sliced sponge cake in a deep glass dish and pour ½ cup of hot milk over it to soak.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the egg yolks and stir in 4 tablespoons of sugar.

  2. Heat the remaining milk and gradually pour it over the egg mixture while stirring continuously.

  3. Return the mixture to the saucepan and stir until it thickens, then let it cool slightly.

  4. Add the lemon extract and grated lemon rind, then pour over the sponge cake.

Top and serve

  1. Whip the egg whites to stiff peaks, sweeten with 1 tablespoon of sugar, and add a few drops of lemon extract.

  2. Spread the meringue over the cooled cake just before serving.

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 + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Milk + eggtop 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 + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Sponge cake
Forms the soft base that soaks up the hot milk and holds the custard.
Milk
Provides the liquid for the soaking and the custard, giving moisture and body.
Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard, while whites whip into a foam that forms the meringue topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and meringue, and helps the whipped whites hold their shape.

The step that matters

Thickening the custard. Egg yolks set when heated, so the hot milk must be added gradually while stirring constantly. Stirring spreads the heat evenly and keeps the yolks from scrambling into lumps, giving a smooth custard that thickens properly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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