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Dessert

Pudding a LA Reine Victoria

A custard-filled bread pudding with almonds, raisins, lime rind, wine, and candied peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,781 recipes. Both carry 2-nonanone, which smells fruity, floral. The science ↓

Pudding a LA Reine Victoria

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Put the bread, almonds, raisins, and lime rind into a basin.

  2. Pour the wine over the mixture.

Make the custard

  1. Brown the sugar in a saucepan.

  2. Pour in the cream and stir.

  3. Add the beaten yolks of eggs.

  4. Thicken the mixture in a bain-marie.

  5. Strain the custard into the mixture in the basin.

Mould and steam

  1. Butter a mold.

  2. Decorate the mold with candied peel.

  3. Fill the mold with the mixture.

  4. Steam for 1.5 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with custard or sauce.

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. Almond + raisintop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

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

  2. Almond + limetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together258 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  4. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Forms the soft body of the pudding, soaking up the liquid to set into a tender crumb.
Yolks of eggs
Thicken the custard as they cook gently, giving it a smooth, set texture.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, producing a smooth, velvety custard.
Butter
Greases the mold so the pudding releases cleanly and browns lightly at the edges.
Sugar
Browned in a saucepan, it adds caramel flavour and sweetness to the custard.
Almonds
Add nutty flavour and a slightly chewy texture to the pudding body.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture in a bain-marie. Egg yolks set at a gentle heat, around 70 to 80 degrees Celsius. Heating too fast or too hot can scramble them into a grainy custard, so the water bath keeps the temperature low and even.

Swap the lime

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, bread, almond, raisin, wine, cream, egg. 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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