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Dessert

Wine Jelly Meringue

A layered dessert of wine jelly, meringue, custard, and sponge cake.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Wine Jelly Meringue

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the jelly and meringue

  1. Fill a dish about halfway with wine jelly.

  2. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth and gradually add the sugar.

  3. Spread the meringue over the top of the jelly.

Make the custard and layers

  1. Prepare boiled custard with the egg yolks and flavor it with wine.

  2. Dip the sponge cake slices in wine and layer them in a pudding dish.

  3. Pour a little boiled custard over the first layer of cake, then add another layer of cake.

  4. Repeat the layering process, finishing with meringue on top.

Bake and serve

  1. Brown the meringue in the oven at 400°F (200°C) and serve cold.

  2. When serving, pour a little boiled custard over the jelly.

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. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  2. Wine + sugartop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together9,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Wine + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptenal (green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped into a stiff froth, they form the meringue that gives the top its light, airy structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the meringue and helps stabilize the whipped egg whites.
Egg yolks
Thicken the boiled custard, giving it a smooth, rich texture.
Sponge cake
Soaks up wine and custard, providing a soft, absorbent base for the layers.
Wine jelly
Forms the fruity, wine-flavored base layer that the meringue sits on.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth. Egg whites must be whipped until stiff but not dry, and sugar is added gradually so the foam holds its shape and bakes into a stable, light meringue. Any trace of fat or yolk can stop the whites from whipping properly.

“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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