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Dessert

Cabinet Pudding

A baked pudding made with sponge cake, dried fruit, eggs, milk, and lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 round mold or basin with butter.

  2. Stick dried cherries or raisins around the interior.

Assemble the pudding

  1. Fill the mold three-quarters full with sponge cake, interspersing with ratafias.

  2. Sprinkle brandy over the sponge cake.

  3. In a saucepan, boil milk with lemon rind.

  4. In a bowl, whisk eggs with powdered sugar.

  5. Gradually add the hot milk to the egg mixture, whisking continuously.

  6. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve into the mold.

Steam and serve

  1. Cover the mold with buttered paper and place it in a pot with 2 inches of boiling water.

  2. Cover the pot and simmer gently until the pudding is firm.

  3. Remove from the pot, detach the paper, and turn out onto a plate.

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

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

  2. Raisin + brandytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,768 recipes

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

  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. Raisin + milktop 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 so the pudding holds its shape when turned out.
Milk
Forms the liquid custard that soaks into the sponge and sets with the eggs.
Sponge cake
Provides the body of the pudding, soaking up the custard as it sets.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the custard and dissolves smoothly into the eggs and milk.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavor to the sponge layer.

The step that matters

Gently simmering the water bath. Boiling vigorously or letting the water boil dry can make the egg custard rough, bubbly, or porous. Gentle, steady heat lets the eggs set evenly into a smooth, firm pudding.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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