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Dessert

Cabinet Pudding, Boiled

A boiled custard pudding made with milk, sugar, lemon rind, eggs, and layered with biscuits, raisins, candied peel, and crushed crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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, Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Heat the milk with sugar and lemon rind in a saucepan until nearly boiling.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in the beaten eggs.

Assemble the mold

  1. Butter a mold thickly and decorate with raisins and candied peel.

  2. Layer the mold with sponge finger biscuits and crushed latafias, being careful not to disturb the decoration.

  3. Once the mold is nearly full, pour the cold custard over the layers.

  4. Cover the custard with buttered writing paper.

Steam and serve

  1. Place the covered mold in a saucepan.

  2. Steam gently for 1 hour.

  3. Serve with wine 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 + biscuittop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Lemon + biscuittop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together697 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

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

  5. Lemon + raisintop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, giving it a firm, sliceable body.
Sponge finger biscuits
Soak up the custard, forming the soft, layered body of the pudding.
New milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, giving it richness and body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the custard.
Crushed latafias
Add crumb texture and almond-like flavour between the layers.

The step that matters

Steam gently. Gentle heat lets the egg custard set evenly and smoothly. Vigorous boiling can make it grainy, full of holes, or cause it to curdle and weep.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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