Name: Cabinet Pudding
Ingredients: 3 or 4 penny sponge cakes, cut into squares; raisins; rich custard

Cabinet Pudding

Ingredients

3 or 4 penny sponge cakes, cut into squares
raisins
rich custard

Directions

Prepare the mold

Butter a mold generously.
Line the bottom with raisins.

Assemble and steam

Add the sponge cake squares, layering with more raisins.
Pour the rich custard over the cake and raisins.
Steam for 1.5 hours.

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

What each ingredient does

Sponge cakes: Forms the bulk of the pudding and soaks up the custard as it steams.
Rich custard: Provides moisture and richness, setting into a soft body as the pudding steams.
Raisins: Add sweetness and chewy texture between layers of cake.

“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.