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Dessert

Cabinet Pudding

A fruit custard pudding made with raisins, candied peaches, cherries, currants, biscuits, and hot custard, steamed and served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and biscuit work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cabinet Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mold

  1. Butter a plain mold and place a round of paper at the bottom.

Layer and fill

  1. Add a layer of mixed fruit about ¼ inch deep, then layer finger biscuits or sliced sponge cake on top of the fruit.

  2. Repeat layers until the mold is two-thirds full.

  3. Slowly pour in the hot custard.

  4. Cover the mold and let it stand for a few minutes.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam for 20 to 30 minutes.

  2. Turn the pudding out of the mold and serve hot with 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. Raisin + biscuittop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  3. Peach + biscuittop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together58 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Peach + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together860 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Peach + curranttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Finger biscuits or sliced sponge cake
Forms the body of the pudding and soaks up custard as it sets.
Hot custard
Sets during steaming to bind the layers into a soft, tender pudding.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness to the layers.
Candied peaches or apricots
Add sweetness and a soft, chewy fruit texture.
Cherries
Add sweetness and a bright fruit flavor.

The step that matters

Let the mold stand before steaming. Standing lets the hot custard soak fully into the biscuit or sponge layers, so the pudding sets evenly and does not turn watery or split during steaming.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, peach, butter, 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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