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Dessert

Cabinet Pudding

A steamed pudding made with stale cake, eggs, milk, sugar, vanilla, salt, currants, raisins, and citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Cabinet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your steamer.

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs until light.

  3. Add milk, sugar, vanilla, and salt to the eggs and mix well.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the currants, sultana raisins, and citron.

  5. Grease a pudding dish or mold.

Assemble and steam

  1. Layer the crumbled cake and fruit mixture in the dish, moistening each layer with the egg and milk mixture.

  2. If the pudding seems dry, add a little more milk.

  3. Place the pudding dish in a kettle of water and steam for 5 minutes.

Bake

  1. Transfer to a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) without lifting the cover and leave for 2 to 3 hours.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  3. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  4. Vanilla + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together782 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Stale cake
Forms the body of the pudding and soaks up the egg and milk custard.
Eggs
Set the custard so the pudding holds its shape when cooked.
Milk
Adds moisture and forms the custard with the eggs.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the eggs and fruit.
Currants
Add concentrated fruit flavor and chewy texture.

The step that matters

Transfer to a preheated oven without lifting the cover. Lifting the cover releases steam and heat, which lowers the temperature and can slow or uneven the setting of the egg custard, leaving the pudding texture unreliable.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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