Skip to main content
Dessert

Cabinet Pudding

A layered fruit custard pudding made with stale cake, raisins, currants, citron, candied cherries, and a sweet milk custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cabinet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mold

  1. Grease a 3‑pint pudding mold with butter and sugar.

  2. Mix raisins, currants, citron, and cherries in a bowl.

Layer and make the custard

  1. Cover the bottom of the mold with a layer of mixed fruit, then a layer of cake, and repeat until all ingredients are used.

  2. In a saucepan, combine sweet milk and eggs to make a custard, cooking over low heat until slightly thickened, being careful not to curdle.

  3. Pour the custard over the layered cake and fruit in the mold.

Steam and serve

  1. Place the mold in a pot of boiling water and boil for 2 hours.

  2. Turn the pudding out onto a platter and serve with red jelly and wine 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

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

  4. Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard and bind it into a firm, sliceable pudding.
Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, giving the pudding its moist texture.
Stale cake or lady fingers
Soaks up the custard and provides the body of the pudding.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.
Candied cherries
Add sweetness and bright color, along with chewy texture.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard over low heat. Eggs thicken as they heat but curdle if the temperature climbs too fast, leaving a grainy texture. Gentle heat and constant stirring keep the custard smooth and evenly set.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, raisin, egg, sugar, butter, lemon. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipes