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Dessert

Victoria Pudding

A British pudding made with milk, breadcrumbs, sugar, egg, and flavouring, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Victoria 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.

Make the mixture

  1. Warm the milk and sugar together.

  2. Pour the warm milk mixture over the breadcrumbs.

  3. Add flavouring and a pinch of salt.

  4. Separate the egg, adding the yolk to the mixture and whipping the white until stiff.

  5. Gently fold the whipped egg white into the mixture.

Bake

  1. Pour into a greased pie dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 20 minutes.

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 + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  2. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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 yolk enriches the custard, and the whipped white adds air that lightens the pudding.
Milk
Provides the liquid that softens the crumbs and forms the moist, custard-like base.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb the warm milk and give the pudding its body and structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and balances the flavour of the milk and egg.

The step that matters

Gently fold the whipped egg white into the mixture. Whipped egg white holds air bubbles that give the pudding lift. Stirring or beating vigorously after folding in the white knocks out this air, leaving a denser pudding.

“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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