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Dessert

Wine Jelly Meringue

A dessert made with wine jelly, meringue, custard, and sponge cake layers.

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

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the jelly and meringue

  1. Fill a dish halfway with wine jelly.

  2. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth with the sugar.

  3. Spread the egg white mixture over the top of the jelly.

Make the custard and layer

  1. Prepare a 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 each layer of cake.

  4. Pour a little boiled custard over the jelly when serving.

Brown and serve

  1. Top with the egg white mixture and brown in the oven.

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 with sugar to a stiff foam that sets and browns as a topping.
Egg yolks
Thicken the boiled custard, giving it a smooth, rich texture.
Sugar
Stabilizes the whipped egg whites and adds sweetness to the meringue.
Wine jelly
Forms the base layer, providing moisture and fruity wine flavor.
Sponge cake
Soaks up wine and custard, giving the dish body between layers.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to a stiff froth. Egg whites must be beaten until stiff and free of any yolk or grease, or they will not hold their shape or brown well on top.

“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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