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Dessert

Iced Cabinet Pudding

A chilled dessert made with layered sponge cake, dried fruit, nuts, and custard, set in ice and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Iced Cabinet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mould

  1. Cut stale sponge cake into slices that fit the mould, soaking them in dilute Extract of Nectarine.

  2. Layer dried cherries, currants, sliced citron, and chopped almonds in the bottom of the mould.

  3. Add a slice of cake, then alternate layers of fruit and cake until the mould is half full.

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, combine milk, egg yolks, sugar, Extract of Cinnamon, and Extract of Nutmeg.

  2. Heat gently until thickened but not curdled.

  3. Once lukewarm, pour the custard into the mould, cover tightly, and bury in ice and salt for at least 2 hours.

Serve

  1. To serve, dip the mould in lukewarm water and turn out onto a dish. It should be firm.

  2. Serve with cream or a soft custard flavored with Extract of Orange, Rose, or Vanilla.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Almond + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Almond + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks thicken the milk into a custard that sets the pudding.
Stale sponge cake
Forms the body of the pudding, soaking up custard as it sets.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, giving it a soft, creamy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps balance the flavors.
Dried cherries
Adds chewy fruit texture and concentrated sweetness between cake layers.

The step that matters

Heat the custard gently. Egg yolks thicken as they warm but curdle if overheated, so low, gentle heat keeps the custard smooth. Cooling it to lukewarm before pouring also protects the set.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (almond, milk, egg, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, cream):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, milk, egg, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, cream. 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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