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Dessert

Virginia Pudding

A lemon and wine pudding made with milk, pudding mix, flour, eggs, sugar, and lemon rind.

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

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 batter

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

  2. Sift in the flour and mix well.

  3. Add the yolks of the eggs and the grated lemon rind.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for 20 minutes at 350°F (175°C).

  2. For the sauce, beat the egg whites to a stiff froth and mix in the sugar, wine, and lemon juice.

  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

Flour
Provides structure so the batter sets into a firm, sliceable pudding.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help the pudding set as it bakes.
Egg whites
Beaten to a stiff froth, they lighten the sauce and give it a airy texture.
Milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour and pudding to form a batter.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the sauce and balances the lemon and wine.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to a stiff froth. Egg whites need to be whipped until they hold stiff peaks, because trapped air is what makes the sauce light. Under-beaten whites stay runny and deflate, and over-beaten whites turn dry and grainy.

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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