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Dessert

Cabinet Pudding

A steamed pudding made with stale sponge cake, custard, raisins, citron, currants, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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

  1. Preheat your steamer.

  2. Beat the eggs, sugar, and salt together, then add the milk.

  3. Butter a 3‑pint pudding mold and sprinkle the sides and bottom with the chopped fruits.

Assemble and steam

  1. Layer the stale sponge cake over the fruit, then add more fruit, and continue layering until all ingredients are used.

  2. Gradually pour the custard mixture over the layered cake and fruit.

  3. Let the pudding stand for 2 hours.

  4. Steam the pudding for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with wine or creamy 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. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  5. Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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 steamed.
Stale sponge cake
Forms the bulk of the pudding and soaks up the custard as it stands.
Milk
Makes the liquid custard that binds the cake and fruit together.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the richness of the eggs and milk.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness and moisture through the pudding.

The step that matters

Letting the pudding stand for 2 hours. Standing gives the stale cake time to absorb the custard fully. Without this soaking, dry pockets remain and the pudding can steam unevenly and turn out crumbly.

Swap the currant

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

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

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