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Dessert

Cabinet Pudding a LA Francaise

A layered custard pudding with lady-fingers, candied cherries, citron, raisins, currants, macaroni, and rum sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 a LA Francaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the crust from the lady-fingers and butter them.

  2. Grease a fluted pudding mold and line it with the lady-fingers.

  3. In a bowl, combine the candied cherries, citron, raisins, currants, and macaroni with the remaining lady-finger scraps.

  4. Reserve 8 lady-finger scraps for the top.

  5. Layer the fruit mixture in the mold and add a layer of butter.

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, whisk together the egg whites, egg yolks, and milk to make a custard, sweetening to taste.

  2. Pour the custard over the cake and fruit in the mold.

Boil and make the sauce

  1. Boil slowly for 2½ hours.

  2. For the sauce, combine the rum, milk, and 2 eggs in a saucepan.

  3. Stir the sauce until it almost boils.

Finish and serve

  1. Beat the reserved egg whites until light.

  2. Spread the beaten egg whites on top of the pudding after removing it from the mold.

  3. Garnish with a few candied cherries.

  4. Serve the sauce hot over the pudding.

  5. Serve hot.

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 + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  3. Milk + rumtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together967 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  4. Currant + rumtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together155 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Butter + rumtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,007 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard and give the pudding its structure as they coagulate with heat.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and keeps the pudding moist.
Lady-fingers
Soak up the custard and form the soft, cake-like body of the pudding.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture within the pudding.
Jamaica rum
Adds aroma and flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil slowly for 2½ hours. Egg custard sets as its proteins coagulate with gentle heat. Vigorous boiling can make the pudding porous, spongy, or cause it to break apart, so the heat should stay steady and gentle throughout.

Swap the currant

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

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

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