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Dessert

Victoria Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, flour, jam, dried fruit, sugar, milk, bread crumbs, apple, candied peel, brandy, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and apple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 777 recipes. Both carry gamma-undecalactone, which smells peach, sweet. The science ↓

Victoria Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix all the ingredients together in a large bowl.

  2. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold.

  3. Cover the mold with greased paper.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam for 2½ hours.

  2. Carefully turn out the pudding and serve with brandy 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. Apricot + appletop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together777 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).

  2. Apricot + brandytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together513 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Apple + brandytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,291 recipes

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

  5. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and help set the pudding as it steams.
Flour
Provides structure so the pudding holds its shape when turned out.
Suet
Adds fat that gives the pudding a rich, moist texture.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and add body to the soft, sponge-like crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown lightly at the surface.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture and helps bind the dry ingredients together.

The step that matters

Carefully turn out the pudding. Steamed puddings are soft and held together mainly by eggs and starch while hot. Letting it rest briefly before turning it out helps it firm slightly and keep its shape.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, apricot, sugar, milk, bread, brandy, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, apricot, sugar, milk, bread, brandy, 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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