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Dessert

Alexandra Pudding

A steamed custard pudding made with eggs, sugar, milk, cream, vanilla, and folded egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Alexandra Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil a saucepan of warm water.

  2. In a basin, combine the yolks of 10 eggs and 2 oz of castor sugar.

  3. Add ½ cup of milk and ½ pint of cream to the egg mixture.

  4. In another bowl, whip the whites of 5 eggs until slightly stiff.

  5. Grease a 1½ pint tin mold and line the bottom with buttered paper.

  6. Gently fold the whipped egg whites and 1 teaspoon of vanilla into the yolk mixture.

Steam and cool

  1. Strain the mixture into the prepared mold and cover with stiff paper tied with string.

  2. Place the mold in the boiling water, ensuring the water reaches halfway up the mold.

  3. Simmer gently for about 1 hour and 15 minutes until firm, avoiding a rapid boil.

  4. Remove the pudding from the saucepan and cool it in ice.

Serve

  1. To serve, remove the buttered paper and carefully turn the pudding onto a dish, garnishing with red currants.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
Whipped whites lighten the custard and the yolks set it into a firm, sliceable pudding.
Cream
Fat adds richness and a soft, smooth texture to the set custard.
Milk
Adds liquid that dilutes the custard so it sets gently rather than tightly.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the yolks blend smoothly with the liquid.

The step that matters

Simmer gently, avoiding a rapid boil. Egg proteins set at moderate heat. A rapid boil can make the water and custard bubble violently, leaving a pudding that is cracked, porous, or uneven in texture.

“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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