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Dessert

Lucy Stone’s Bread Meringue

A sweet dessert made from bread crumbs, milk, sugar, eggs, lemon, and a meringue topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Lucy Stone’s Bread Meringue

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a cool oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the base

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

  2. In a bowl, combine the bread crumbs, sweet milk, brown sugar, egg yolks, grated lemon rind, and butter. Mix well and pour into a baking dish.

  3. Bake until the mixture is firm.

Top and bake

  1. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until frothy, then gradually add the powdered sugar and lemon juice.

  2. Spread the meringue over the baked mixture and return to the oven.

  3. Bake until the meringue is lightly browned.

Serve

  1. Serve cold, with or without fruit or 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. Milk + breadtop 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. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Provide the bulk that soaks up the milk and sets into a soft, tender body.
Egg yolks
Enrich the base and help it set firm when baked.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam to form the light, airy meringue topping.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves easily into the whipped whites, sweetening and stabilizing the meringue.
Brown sugar
Sweetens the base and adds a deeper, caramel-like flavor.
Sweet milk
Supplies the liquid that moistens the crumbs and gives the custard-like base its softness.

The step that matters

Baking the meringue until lightly browned. Egg white foam can collapse or turn weepy if underbaked or overbaked. Watching for light browning sets the topping while keeping it tender and airy.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, bread, sugar, egg, butter. 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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