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Dessert

Victoria Pudding

A steamed custard pudding made with milk, vanilla, bread crumbs, sugar, brandy, eggs, and served with sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Victoria Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Boil the vanilla in the milk until flavored.

  2. Strain the milk over the bread crumbs.

  3. Add sugar, brandy, and beaten eggs; mix well.

Prepare the mold

  1. Butter and flour a mold, then decorate with cherries, citron, or raisins.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour in the pudding mixture cold, cover with a plate, and steam over boiling water for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

  2. Turn the pudding onto a hot dish and serve with Victoria sauce or melted red currant jelly.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

Vanilla and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
Bind the mixture and set into a firm, sliceable pudding when steamed.
Bread crumbs
Form the body of the pudding and soak up the milk to give a soft texture.
Milk
Provides the liquid that softens the crumbs and carries the vanilla flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the richness of the eggs and milk.

The step that matters

Steam over gentle, steady heat. Eggs set through gentle heat; if the water boils too hard or the steamer runs dry, the pudding can become rough, cracked, or unevenly cooked. Keeping the water at a steady simmer and the cover sealed lets the custard set evenly.

“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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