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Dessert

Virginia Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with eggs, milk, cream or butter, flour, sugar, and flavored with wine or lemon, topped with a frothy egg white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Virginia Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the pudding

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

  2. In a bowl, mix the 5 eggs, milk, cream (or butter), flour, and salt until well combined.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake for 30 minutes.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, beat the reserved egg whites until frothy.

  2. Gradually add the sugar while continuing to beat until stiff peaks form.

  3. Flavor the sauce with wine or lemon.

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

  5. Serve cold.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Eggs
Set the custard structure as they cook, and whipped whites lighten the sauce.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that the eggs and flour set into a custard.
Flour
Thickens the mixture so it holds a soft, sliceable body after baking.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and stabilizes the whipped egg white foam.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Whites under-beaten stay runny and deflate the sauce, while over-beaten whites turn grainy and dry. Adding sugar gradually helps the foam stay glossy and stable.

“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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