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Dessert

Lemon Meringue Pudding

A baked pudding made from bread, milk, eggs, lemon rind, sugar, and lemon juice, topped with a browned meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Lemon Meringue Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the base

  1. Break the bread into pieces and boil it in the milk until soft.

  2. Beat the yolks of the eggs with the grated lemon rind.

  3. Mix the egg yolks with the bread and milk.

  4. Pour the mixture into a pie dish.

Bake and top

  1. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for about 20 minutes.

  2. Remove from the oven and let cool.

  3. Whisk the egg whites with the caster sugar and lemon juice until stiff.

  4. Spread the whisked mixture over the cooled pudding.

  5. Return to the oven to brown for about 5 minutes.

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. Lemon + sugartop 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).

Lemon and sugar 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 and whites whisk into a stiff meringue topping.
Bread
Soaked in milk, it softens and gives the pudding body and a light, spoonable texture.
Milk
Provides the liquid that sets with the egg yolks into a soft custard.
Caster sugar
Sweetens the meringue and helps the whites hold a stiff, glossy structure.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps stabilise the meringue.

The step that matters

Return to the oven to brown for about 5 minutes.. Meringue can go from golden to scorched quickly. Watch it closely, since sugar browns fast at high heat and the topping can burn before the pudding is ready.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, 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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