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Dessert

Victoria Pudding

A steamed pudding made with eggs, butter, sugar, flour, marmalade, baking soda, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Victoria Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter and sugar together until creamy.

  2. Add the well-beaten eggs and marmalade, mixing well.

  3. Sift in the flour and add the baking soda dissolved in boiling water.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Steam for three hours.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during steaming.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender crumb through creaming with the sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps create a light texture when creamed with butter.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets the pudding as it steams.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity in the batter to produce gas that lightens the pudding.
Marmalade
Adds sweetness, citrus flavour, and moisture to the batter.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda in boiling water before sifting it in. Baking soda needs moisture and heat to dissolve and react evenly. Dissolving it first spreads the leavening through the batter, so the pudding rises uniformly instead of forming dense or patchy pockets.

“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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