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Dessert

Alexandra Pudding

A custard pudding made with eggs, sugar, milk, cream, and vanilla, baked in a water bath.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Alexandra Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil a saucepan of warm water.

  2. In a basin, combine the yolks of 10 eggs and 2 oz of castor sugar.

  3. Add ½ cup of milk and 1 pint of heavy cream to the yolk mixture.

  4. Whip the whites of 5 eggs until slightly frothy.

  5. Butter a 1½ pint tin mold and line the bottom with buttered paper.

Make the pudding

  1. Fold the whipped egg whites and 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract into the yolk mixture.

  2. Strain the mixture into the mold and cover with stiff paper tied with string.

  3. Place the mold in the boiling water, ensuring the water reaches halfway up the mold.

  4. Simmer gently for about 1 hour and 15 minutes until firm, avoiding a rapid boil.

Cool and serve

  1. Remove the pudding from the saucepan and cool it in ice.

  2. To serve, remove the buttered paper and carefully turn the pudding onto a dish, garnishing with 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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla 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
The yolks thicken and set the custard, giving the pudding its firm body.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam, they lighten the mixture and give the pudding a delicate, airy texture.
Heavy cream
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, tender texture.
Milk
Provides the liquid that dilutes the yolks into a pourable custard base.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps keep it tender.
Vanilla extract
Adds a warm, aromatic flavour to the custard.

The step that matters

Simmer gently, never at a rapid boil. Egg custard sets when the proteins coagulate gently. At a rapid boil the water and heat are too intense, so the pudding can curdle, turn grainy, or form holes instead of setting smooth and 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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