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Dessert

Corn Starch Meringue

A dessert made from milk, corn starch, sugar, egg yolks, egg whites, flavored with jelly or jam, baked and topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Corn Starch Meringue

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan until it boils.

  2. Stir in the corn starch dissolved in a little milk and boil for 15 minutes, stirring constantly.

  3. Remove from heat and add the beaten egg yolks, sugar, and flavoring while hot.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered dish and bake for 15 minutes.

  2. Without removing from the oven, spread the whipped egg whites and jelly or jam on top.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  4. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the custard thickens and sets into.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk as it boils, giving the custard body and a smooth set.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help the custard set and turn smooth.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that forms the light meringue topping and browns in the oven.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps stabilise the whipped egg white topping.

The step that matters

Boiling the corn starch custard while stirring constantly. Cornstarch only thickens fully once the mixture reaches a boil and stays there. Constant stirring prevents lumps and scorching on the base of the pan, while adding the yolks off the heat keeps them from curdling.

“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.

More cornstarch meringue recipes

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