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Cabinet Pudding with Jelly Sauce

A baked currant pudding served with a currant jelly sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Cabinet Pudding with Jelly Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick over the currants, wash them in cold water, and dry on a clean towel. Slice the stale bread.

Assemble and steam

  1. Butter a pudding mold, layer the bread and currants alternately, and pour over a custard made from the milk and eggs.

  2. Set the mold in a saucepan half full of boiling water, cover, and steam for one hour.

Make the sauce

  1. For the jelly sauce, melt 1 oz of sugar and 2 tablespoons of currant jelly in ½ pint of boiling water.

  2. Stir in 1 teaspoon of corn starch dissolved in ½ cup of cold water, bring to a boil, and it's ready to serve.

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 + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Currant + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Bread + corntop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together547 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Forms the structure that soaks up the custard and holds its shape.
Eggs
Set the custard so the pudding firms up when steamed.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, adding moisture and softness.
Dried currants
Provide concentrated fruit flavor and chewy pockets throughout the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the sauce and balances the tartness of the currants.
Corn starch
Thickens the jelly sauce as it heats, giving it body.

The step that matters

Steaming the custard gently. Eggs set into a smooth custard only at moderate heat. A hard, rolling boil can make the pudding spongy or cause it to weep. Keep the water at a gentle simmer throughout the one hour of steaming.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, egg, sugar, corn. 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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