Skip to main content
Dessert

Virginia Pudding

A baked milk pudding with lemon rind, egg yolks, and a frothy egg white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Virginia Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the base

  1. Scald the milk.

  2. Pour the scalded milk over the pudding flour.

  3. Add the yolks of five eggs, the whites of two, and the grated lemon rind. Mix well.

Bake

  1. Bake for 20 minutes at 400°F (200°C).

Finish and serve

  1. Beat the whites of three eggs to a stiff froth.

  2. Add the sugar, wine, and lemon juice.

  3. Pour over the pudding 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Pudding flour
Thickens the milk and gives the baked pudding its body and structure.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set as it bakes.
Egg whites
Whipped to a foam, they add lightness and lift to the pudding.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour and eggs set into a custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the lemon and wine.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender, smooth texture.

The step that matters

Beat the whites of three eggs to a stiff froth. Whites under-beaten give little lift, while over-beaten whites turn dry and grainy. Stiff, glossy peaks trap air that expands in the oven and lightens the pudding.

Swap the lemon

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

  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, 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes