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Dessert

Meringue Pudding

A baked pudding made with stale bread crumbs, milk, egg yolks, butter, sugar, lemon rind, topped with preserves and meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the pudding

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, combine stale bread crumbs, milk, egg yolks, butter, sugar, salt, and lemon rind.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake for 45 minutes.

Top and finish

  1. Once cool, spread preserves or jelly on top.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat egg whites until soft peaks form, then gradually add powdered sugar until stiff peaks form.

  3. Spread the meringue over the pudding and brown in the oven for a few minutes.

  4. Serve with 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Stale bread crumbs
Form the body of the pudding by soaking up the milk and eggs as it bakes.
Egg yolks
Enrich and set the custard, giving the pudding a soft, tender texture.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that bakes into a light, sweet, browned meringue topping.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the bread and eggs absorb and set into a custard.
Powdered sugar
Stabilizes the whipped egg whites and sweetens the meringue topping.

The step that matters

Whipping the meringue to stiff peaks. Egg whites must be beaten until stiff and glossy, with sugar added gradually, so the foam holds its shape and bakes into a stable, tender meringue rather than weeping or collapsing.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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

Lemon 32Apple 22Cream 9Chocolate 8Rice 5Cornstarch 4 See all 31 →

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