Skip to main content
Dessert

Steamed Cabinet Pudding

A steamed pudding made with stale cake, eggs, milk, sugar, vanilla, fruit, and citrus.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Steamed Cabinet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard

  1. In a bowl, stir the milk into the beaten eggs.

  2. Add the sugar, vanilla, and salt to the mixture.

Assemble the pudding

  1. Grease a pudding mold and fill it with alternate layers of fruit and crumbled cake, starting with fruit.

  2. Moisten each layer of cake with a little of the milk and egg mixture.

  3. If the cake seems dry when the mold is filled, add a little more milk.

Steam and unmold

  1. Cover the mold and steam the pudding for 2 hours.

  2. If the pudding does not release easily, dip the mold briefly in cold water to loosen it.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  3. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  4. Vanilla + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together782 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Stale cake
Forms the body of the pudding and soaks up the custard as it steams.
Eggs
Bind the custard and set during steaming to give the pudding its firm structure.
Milk
Provides moisture and liquid that softens the cake and forms the custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the savory salt and fruit flavors.

The step that matters

Steaming the pudding. Steam must be gentle and steady so the egg custard sets evenly through the cake. Too little heat or water leaves the pudding wet or underset, while overly vigorous boiling can make the texture rough and the pudding waterlogged.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

You might also like

Vanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipesCurrant Ice CreamCurrant Ice Cream32 recipesCurrant SherbetCurrant Sherbet9 recipes