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Dessert

Virginia Pudding

A custard pudding made with eggs, milk, cream or butter, flour, and a frothy egg white sauce flavored with wine or lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Virginia 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.

Prepare the pudding

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, combine the 5 eggs, milk, cream (or butter), flour, and salt. Mix well.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake for 30 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. While the pudding is baking, beat the reserved egg whites until frothy.

  2. Gradually add the sugar to the egg whites and continue beating until well combined.

  3. Flavor the sauce with wine or lemon to taste.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the pudding just before serving.

  2. Serve cold.

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

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

  2. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Provide structure and set the pudding, while the whites whipped into the sauce add lightness.
Flour
Thickens the custard base so it holds its shape when baked.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and adds moisture and softness.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the pudding a smoother, more tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the egg-white sauce and helps stabilize the beaten whites.

The step that matters

Pour the sauce over the pudding just before serving. Beaten egg whites deflate over time as their foam loses air and liquid. Adding the sauce just before serving keeps it light and frothy.

“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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