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Dessert

Victoria Pudding

A steamed custard made with milk, cream, eggs, sugar, crushed macaroons, lemon essence, and optional brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Victoria Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Boil the milk.

  2. Add the cream and sugar to the boiling milk.

  3. Pour the mixture over the crushed macaroons.

  4. Beat the eggs.

  5. Strain the beaten eggs into the mixture.

  6. Set the mixture over low heat in a saucepan and stir until hot but not boiling.

  7. When nearly cold, add the lemon essence and brandy if desired.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a well-buttered mold.

  2. Cover the mold with buttered paper.

  3. Steam for 45 minutes to 1 hour.

  4. Turn out onto a hot dish.

  5. Serve with any sweet sauce or syrup.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Brandy + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the pudding into a firm, sliceable body as they cook with the milk.
Macaroons
Crumbs soak up the hot milk mixture, giving the pudding body and an almond-like flavour.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs set in, keeping the pudding tender.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving a softer, smoother texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the flavour of the eggs and milk.

The step that matters

Stir the custard over low heat until hot but not boiling. Egg proteins thicken gently at moderate heat. Boiling can curdle the custard and leave it grainy, so keep it just hot and stir steadily.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, egg, milk, sugar, brandy, butter. 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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