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Dessert

Strawberry Meringue Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with bread crumbs, milk, strawberries, 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: 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 ↓

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

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together in a bowl.

  3. Add the beaten egg yolks, milk, and bread crumbs to the mixture.

  4. Pour the mixture into a buttered pudding dish and bake covered until firm.

Top and bake

  1. Once firm, remove from the oven and spread the strawberries on top.

  2. Sprinkle with powdered sugar.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until light and fluffy, then fold in the ½ cup powdered sugar.

  4. Spread the meringue over the strawberries and return to the oven.

  5. Bake until the meringue is lightly browned.

Serve

  1. Serve perfectly cold with slightly sweetened whipped cream.

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. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 egg, giving the custard body so it sets firm rather than runny.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set, giving it a rich, smooth texture.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that bakes into a light, airy meringue topping.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the bread crumbs soak up and the eggs set in.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and helps the meringue whip and stay glossy.
Strawberries
Add fruit flavour and moisture beneath the meringue.

The step that matters

Baking the meringue until lightly browned. Meringue is mostly whipped egg white and sugar; it needs enough heat to dry and brown the surface, but too long in the oven can weep, toughen, or collapse. Watch the colour rather than the clock.

“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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