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Dessert

Cabinet Pudding

A layered pudding made with buttered mold, raisins, citron, cake, sugar, egg yolks, and boiling milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cabinet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mold

  1. Butter a mold.

  2. Cover the bottom with raisins and citron.

  3. Add a layer of cake, then alternate layers of fruit and cake.

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, mix sugar and egg yolks.

  2. Add boiling milk to the mixture and stir well.

  3. Pour the mixture over the cake and fruit layers.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in the oven until set.

  2. 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and bind it into a set, sliceable texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that softens the cake and sets with the eggs.
Cake
Forms the body of the pudding, soaking up the custard as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the richness of the egg yolks.

The step that matters

Baking until set. Egg proteins coagulate as they heat, so the custard firms into a sliceable pudding. Overbaking can make it curdle, weep and turn rubbery, while underbaking leaves it runny in the middle.

Swap the raisin

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, 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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