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Dessert

Cuban Pudding

A steamed pudding made with crumbled sponge cakes, grated coconut, cream, sugar, eggs, and preserved ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Coconut and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,168 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Cuban Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. In a basin, combine the crumbled sponge cakes and grated coconut.

  2. Heat the cream with the sugar until boiling, then pour it over the cake mixture.

  3. Cover the basin and let it soak up the cream.

  4. Stir in the beaten eggs until well combined.

Mold and cook

  1. Butter a mold and arrange the preserved ginger around it.

  2. Carefully pour the pudding mixture into the mold and tie it down with a cloth.

  3. Steam or boil slowly for 1.5 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with warmed ginger syrup poured over the pudding.

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. Coconut + gingertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,168 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  3. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  4. Coconut + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,223 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Sponge cakes
Crumbled cake soaks up the hot cream and forms the soft, sliceable body of the pudding.
Grated coconut
Adds moisture and chewy texture, and its fat contributes richness to the pudding.
Rich cream
Soaks into the cake and adds fat, moisture and a tender, custard-like texture.
Eggs
Beaten eggs set during steaming, binding the mixture into a firm but tender pudding.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps dissolve into the hot cream for even flavour.

The step that matters

Steam or boil slowly for 1.5 hours. Gentle, steady heat lets the egg proteins set gradually into a tender custard. Vigorous boiling can make the pudding rough, porous or cracked, and the cloth must be tied loosely enough for the pudding to expand.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Turmericfits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against coconut, cream, sugar, 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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