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Dessert

Orange Meringue Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with bread crumbs, milk, eggs, butter, sugar, orange zest and juice, topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Orange 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 base

  1. Mix bread crumbs with milk in a bowl.

  2. Add beaten egg yolks, butter, and sugar; mix until creamy.

  3. Stir in the grated rind and juice of the orange.

  4. Pour mixture into a buttered pie dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) until firm.

Top and serve

  1. In another bowl, beat egg whites until firm; gradually add sugar and a little orange juice.

  2. Spread meringue over the pudding and return to the oven for a few minutes until set.

  3. Serve immediately.

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. Bread + milktop 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 + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and give the pudding its body.
Egg yolks
Enrich and set the custard so it turns firm when baked.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that forms the light, set meringue topping.
Milk
Provides moisture and softens the crumbs into a custard base.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, creamy texture.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites for the meringue. Egg whites must be beaten until firm and the sugar added gradually so the foam holds its shape. Under-beaten or greasy whites collapse and weep, and the topping will not set properly in the oven.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, 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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