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Dessert

Cabinet Pudding

A sweet pudding made with raisins or peaches, suet, molasses, milk, and baking soda, boiled for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and molasses are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,577 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Cabinet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Combine raisins or peaches, suet, molasses, and milk in a bowl.

  2. Stir in baking soda until the mixture is as thick as cake batter.

Mold and cook

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Boil for three hours.

Serve

  1. Serve 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 + molassestop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Raisin + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  3. Molasses + milktop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Raisins or stewed peaches
Adds moisture, sweetness and chewy fruit texture to the pudding.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich during long cooking.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color and moisture, and reacts with the baking soda.
Milk
Supplies liquid that hydrates the batter and helps it set as it cooks.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to release gas that lightens the pudding's texture.

The step that matters

Stir in baking soda until the mixture is as thick as cake batter. Baking soda starts reacting with the acidic molasses as soon as it is added, so it should be stirred in promptly and evenly. Reaching a cake-batter thickness holds the gas bubbles that lift the pudding during cooking.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (molasses, milk):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinthe original
  4. Applefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, milk. 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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