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Dessert

Victoria Pudding

A custard-like almond pudding flavored with rose water, wine, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Wine and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,427 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Victoria Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the almond paste

  1. Blanch the almonds and rub them in a mortar with rose water to prevent oiling until smooth.

Make the filling

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until smooth and light.

  2. Stir in the almond paste, then add the mixed wine and brandy, and rose water.

  3. Beat the egg yolks separately, then add them to the mixture followed by the beaten egg whites.

Bake

  1. Line a dish with puff pastry and bake until set, similar to a custard.

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. Wine + brandytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  2. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  3. Almond + rosetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,465 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

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

  5. Rose + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together560 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Almonds
Ground into a paste, they provide the dense, rich body of the filling.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and gives the filling a tender, rich texture.
White sugar
Creamed with butter, it adds sweetness and helps create a light, smooth texture.
Eggs
Yolks and whites set the filling into a custard-like structure as it bakes.

The step that matters

Baking until set. Egg-based fillings set through gentle heat, and overbaking can make them curdle, weep and turn tough. Bake only until the centre is just firm.

“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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