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Dessert

Meringue Pudding

A pudding made from bread crumbs, milk, sugar, eggs, and lemon, topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk 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 ↓

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.

Prepare the base

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

  2. Mix the bread crumbs and sugar in a bowl.

  3. Beat the egg yolks and add them to the milk.

  4. Combine the milk mixture with the bread and sugar mixture.

  5. Grate a little of the lemon rind and add it for flavor.

  6. Bake until set.

Top and finish

  1. Beat the egg whites with 1 cup of sugar and the lemon juice until stiff peaks form.

  2. Spread the meringue on top of the pudding.

  3. For variation, add jelly or jam on top before adding the meringue.

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 + milktop 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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard base, while whites whip into the stiff meringue topping.
Bread crumbs
Provide the body of the pudding, soaking up the milk and eggs to form a soft structure.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that sets with the egg yolks to make the custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and, when beaten with the whites, stabilizes the meringue.
Lemon
Rind adds aroma and juice adds acidity that helps stabilize the meringue.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to stiff peaks. Whites must be beaten until stiff and free of any yolk or grease, or they will not hold volume. Sugar added gradually helps the foam stay stable through baking.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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