Skip to main content
Dessert

Victoria Pudding

A steamed pudding made with eggs, butter, flour, sugar, raspberry jam, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Victoria Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Preheat a steamer.

Make and steam the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs with the butter, flour, and sugar until well combined.

  2. Stir in the raspberry jam or marmalade and baking soda.

  3. Pour the mixture into a greased mold.

  4. Steam for 2 hours.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + raspberrytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,308 recipes

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

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 batter and add structure as they set during steaming.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and contributes to browning and tenderness.
Raspberry jam or marmalade
Adds fruity sweetness and moisture to the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter to help it rise and lighten.

The step that matters

Keep the steamer at a steady simmer. Steaming gently cooks the batter through without drying it out. If the water boils too hard or drops low, the pudding can turn out uneven or dense, so the steamer needs to stay steadily hot for the full time.

Swap the raspberry

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, flour, sugar):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Raspberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, flour, sugar. 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.

You might also like

Raspberry JamRaspberry Jam150 recipesRaspberry CreamRaspberry Cream82 recipesRaspberry IceRaspberry Ice29 recipesRaspberry Ice CreamRaspberry Ice Cream24 recipes