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Dessert

Cabinet Pudding

A steamed or boiled pudding made with flour, butter, sugar, eggs, raisins, milk, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cabinet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks to the creamed mixture.

  3. Mix in the milk and flour alternately with the egg whites.

  4. Stir in the floured raisins, lemon juice and peel.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold.

  2. Boil or steam for 1.5 hours.

  3. Serve hot with a liquid 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Eggs
Yolks and whites set with gentle heat, binding the batter and giving it a tender body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, softening the crumb and giving a smooth mouthfeel.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps tenderise the batter as it is creamed.
Milk
Adds moisture and liquid that the flour absorbs as the batter sets.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy pockets throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil or steam for 1.5 hours. Eggs set through gentle, steady heat. Vigorous boiling or overly high heat can make the pudding dense, rubbery or pitted, so keep the water at a gentle simmer.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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