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Dessert

A Plaik Cabinet or Boiled Bbead-anb-butter Pudding

A boiled pudding made with bread, butter, eggs, milk, raisins, sugar, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,377 recipes. Both carry alpha-terpineol, which smells lilac, floral. The science ↓

A Plaik Cabinet or Boiled Bbead-anb-butter Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the basin

  1. Butter a pudding basin and line the inside with a layer of stoned raisins.

  2. Fill the basin with slices of bread and butter, crusts removed.

Make the custard

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the milk, sugar, and grated nutmeg.

  2. Pour the egg mixture over the bread and butter.

Steam and serve

  1. Cover with buttered paper and let it stand for 2 hours.

  2. Tie down with a cloth, place in boiling water, and boil slowly for 1 hour.

  3. Let it stand for a minute before removing the cloth, then turn it out of the basin and serve with sweet sauce.

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. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, binding the milk and bread into a firm pudding.
Milk
Forms the liquid custard that soaks into the bread and gives the pudding its moist texture.
Bread and butter
Forms the body of the pudding, soaking up the custard while the butter adds richness.
Raisins
Add pockets of sweetness and chew that contrast with the soft custard.

The step that matters

Boiling the pudding slowly. Boiling too hard or letting the water dry out can make the pudding rough or uneven. Gentle, steady heat lets the egg custard set evenly through the bread without curdling.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, egg, milk, sugar, nutmeg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinthe original
  4. Lemonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, egg, milk, sugar, nutmeg. 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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