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Dessert

A Virginia Pudding

A sweet custard-like pudding made with bread crumbs, cream, sugar, egg yolks, lemon rind, and topped with currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

A 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.

Prepare

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

  2. Beat the egg yolks, sugar, and lemon rind together.

  3. Stir in the bread crumbs and mix well.

Bake and finish

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake until light brown.

  2. Spread currant jelly or any small preserve on top.

  3. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth and spread over the pudding.

  4. Serve hot or 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. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Bread + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,398 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Bread crumbs
Form the body of the pudding and absorb the liquid to set it.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness so the pudding stays tender.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and help it set as it bakes.
Egg whites
Whipped to a stiff froth, they form a light topping that puffs and browns in the oven.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown.
Currant jelly or preserve
Adds a fruity sweet layer under the meringue-style topping.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth. Egg whites hold air only when beaten to a stiff froth, and under-beaten whites collapse and weep. Spreading them gently over the pudding keeps the light topping from sinking into the custard.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, cream, sugar, egg, lemon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, cream, sugar, egg, lemon. 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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