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Dessert

Lemon Meringue Pudding

A baked pudding made with milk, bread crumbs, egg yolks, sugar, lemon juice, topped with a sweet meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. 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 pudding

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

  2. In a bowl, combine milk, bread crumbs, egg yolks, sugar, and the juice of the lemon.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake until set.

Make the meringue and finish

  1. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Gradually add 2 tablespoons of sugar while continuing to beat.

  3. Spread the meringue over the baked pudding and brown slightly in the oven.

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 + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

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

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

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

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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

Egg yolks
Enrich and set the custard so the pudding firms when baked.
Bread crumbs
Give the pudding body and soak up the milk to form a soft base.
Egg whites
Whip into a stiff foam that forms the meringue topping and browns in the oven.
Milk
Provides liquid that sets with the eggs into a tender custard.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that gives the pudding its bright flavour.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to stiff peaks. Whites must be beaten until stiff and the sugar added gradually so the foam holds its shape and stays glossy. Under-beaten or greasy whites will weep or collapse on top of the pudding.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, bread, 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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