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Dessert

Cabinet Pudding

A custard pudding made with buttered mold, candied fruit, ladyfingers, boiled milk, egg yolks, sugar, and salt, steamed for an hour.

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 covered mold and decorate it with candied fruits or seeded raisins.

  2. Layer lady fingers or sponge cake in the mold, adding a little fruit between layers until nearly full.

Make the custard and steam

  1. Beat the egg yolks, then pour in the boiling milk, sugar, and salt; mix well.

  2. Pour the mixture over the cake in the mold.

  3. Steam for one hour and serve with wine or foamy 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 milk custard so it sets softly around the cake.
Lady fingers or sponge cake
Forms the body of the pudding and soaks up the custard.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and gives it a soft texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the richness of the yolks.

The step that matters

Pouring the custard over the cake. The custard needs to fully reach and soak the cake layers so the pudding sets evenly. Egg yolks set when gently heated, so the steaming must be gentle and steady to avoid a curdled or rubbery texture.

Swap the raisin

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

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

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