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Dessert

Cuban Pudding

A steamed pudding made from crumbled sponge cakes, grated coconut, rich 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 mixture

  1. In a basin, crumble the sponge cakes and add the grated coconut.

  2. Pour the sweetened cream over the mixture and bring it to a boil.

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

  4. Stir in the well-beaten eggs.

Steam and serve

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

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

  3. Steam or boil slowly for 1.5 hours.

  4. 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
Form the bulk of the pudding and soak up the cream to give body.
Grated coconut
Adds moisture, chewy texture and coconut flavor to the pudding.
Rich cream
Moistens the crumbs and gives the pudding a soft, rich texture.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set during steaming so the pudding holds its shape.
Preserved ginger
Provides spicy-sweet aroma and flavor that contrasts the rich custard.

The step that matters

Steam or boil slowly for 1.5 hours. Gentle, steady heat lets the egg set evenly into a tender pudding. A hard boil or uneven heat can make the eggs curdle or the texture rubbery and pocked.

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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