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Dessert

Cuban Pudding

A steamed pudding made with crumbled sponge cakes, grated coconut, cream, sugar, eggs, and preserved ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Coconut and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,168 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Cuban Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard base

  1. Combine crumbled sponge cakes and grated coconut in a basin.

  2. Heat the cream with the sugar in a saucepan until boiling.

  3. Pour the hot cream over the cake mixture.

  4. Cover the basin and let it soak up the cream.

  5. Stir in the beaten eggs until well combined.

Steam and serve

  1. Butter a mold and arrange the preserved ginger around it.

  2. Carefully pour the pudding mixture into the mold and tie it down with a cloth.

  3. Steam or boil slowly for 1.5 hours.

  4. Serve with warmed syrup from the ginger poured over the pudding.

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. Coconut + gingertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,168 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Coconut + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 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

Sponge cakes
Crumbled cake soaks up the hot cream and forms the body of the pudding.
Eggs
Beaten eggs set during steaming, binding the pudding into a firm, sliceable texture.
Rich cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the cake as it soaks.
Grated coconut
Adds moisture, chew and a distinct coconut flavour to the pudding.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the cream and adds flavour to the pudding.

The step that matters

Steaming the pudding gently. Egg-set puddings turn rubbery and split if boiled hard or left too long. A slow, steady steam sets the eggs evenly into a tender custard.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Turmericfits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against coconut, cream, sugar, egg, butter. 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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