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Dessert

Lemon Meringue Pudding

A baked pudding made with milk, bread crumbs, eggs, butter, sugar, lemon juice and rind, topped with meringue.

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

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 custard base

  1. Warm the milk and pour it over the bread crumbs.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks, butter, and sugar, mixing until creamy.

  3. Incorporate the lemon juice and rind.

Bake and top

  1. Bake in a buttered dish at 350°F (175°C) until firm and slightly brown, about 30 minutes.

  2. Remove from the oven and cover with a meringue made from whipped egg whites, 3 tablespoons of powdered sugar, and a little lemon juice.

  3. Brown the meringue slightly and serve hot or cold.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg yolks thicken the custard and set it when baked, while whipped whites form the meringue topping.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the warm milk to give the pudding body and a soft, tender crumb.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that sets into a soft, custard-like pudding when baked.
White sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the custard become smooth and creamy.
Butter
Adds richness and fat for a softer, more tender texture.
Lemon
Juice adds acidity and bright flavour; grated rind adds aroma.

The step that matters

Bake until firm, not overbaked. Egg proteins set as the custard heats, so baking until just firm keeps the pudding smooth and tender; overbaking makes it grainy and watery as the eggs tighten and weep liquid.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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