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Dessert

Virginia Pudding

A milk pudding made with extra fine pudding, eggs, lemon rind, sugar, wine, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,157 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Virginia Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Scald the milk and pour it over the extra fine pudding.

  2. Add the yolks of five eggs, the whites of two, and the grated rind of one lemon.

Bake

  1. Bake for twenty minutes.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, beat the whites of three eggs to a stiff froth.

  2. Mix in one cup of sugar, then add ⅓ cup of wine and the juice of one lemon.

  3. Pour the sauce over the pudding just before serving.

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. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 body of the pudding that thickens and sets as it bakes.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help the pudding set into a soft custard-like texture.
Egg whites
Whipped into a stiff froth in the sauce, trapping air for a light texture.
Flour
Thickens the base and gives the pudding structure as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and balances the acidity of the lemon and wine.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth. Egg white proteins trap air when whipped. Underbeaten whites make a thin, runny sauce, while overbeaten whites turn dry and grainy and lose their smoothness.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, egg, sugar, wine. 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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