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Dessert

Breakfast

A pastry shell filled with lemon custard and topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Breakfast

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 filling

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

  2. Cream together the butter and sugar.

  3. Beat in the egg yolks, lemon juice, nutmeg, and brandy.

  4. Whip the egg whites until light and fold them into the mixture.

  5. Pour the mixture into pastry shells and bake until set and a skin forms on top.

Top and bake

  1. Prepare meringue by whipping the egg whites with sugar and lemon juice.

  2. Spread the meringue over the puddings without removing them from the oven.

  3. Bake until the meringue begins to color.

Serve

  1. Serve 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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Nutmeg + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,311 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks thicken the filling and whites add lightness, then whites form the meringue topping.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to add richness and a tender texture to the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and, whipped with egg whites, stabilizes the meringue.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that gives the filling its tart flavor and helps the meringue stay stable.
Brandy
Adds aroma and depth of flavor to the filling.

The step that matters

Baking the meringue until it just begins to color. Meringue is egg white whipped with sugar, and it browns quickly in the oven. Removing it at the first sign of color and watching for it to stop short of dark brown keeps it tender and prevents it from weeping or becoming tough.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, sugar, nutmeg, brandy. 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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