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Dessert

Cabinet Pudding

A steamed custard dessert made with cream, biscuits, eggs, brandy, and lemon peel, served with wine or custard sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cabinet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard base

  1. Boil the cream with lemon peel and salt.

  2. Pour the boiling cream over the biscuits and let them soak.

  3. Add the egg yolks, beaten egg whites, and brandy to the soaked biscuits.

Steam and serve

  1. Butter a mould and decorate it with preserved cherries.

  2. Pour the mixture into the mould and steam in a bain marie for 30 minutes.

  3. Serve with a clear wine sauce or custard 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Brandy + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Cream + biscuittop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Cream + brandytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,635 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Sponge or naples biscuits
Soak up the cream and set into the body of the pudding.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, softening the biscuits as it soaks.
Egg yolks
Enrich the mixture and help it set into a tender custard.
Egg whites
Whisked in for lightness and structure as the pudding steams.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour to the pudding.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture into the mould and steam in a bain marie. Gentle, indirect steam heats the eggs slowly so the pudding sets evenly and stays smooth. Too much heat can curdle the eggs and leave the texture rough or watery.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, biscuit, egg, brandy, 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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