Skip to main content
Dessert

Hot Cabinet-pudding, Rum Sauce

A steamed fruit and cake pudding served with rum sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Hot Cabinet-pudding, Rum Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mould

  1. Butter a round or oval pudding mould thickly with cold butter.

  2. Make wreaths with the citron, flower-shaped fruit, and cherries on the bottom and sides of the mould, securing them with butter.

  3. Line the mould with thin sponge cake cut to fit.

  4. Fill the mould with alternate layers of cake and the remaining fruit.

Make the custard

  1. Mix the eggs, sugar, and milk to make a custard.

  2. Strain the custard.

  3. Slowly pour the custard into the mould over the cake and fruit.

Steam and serve

  1. Place the mould in a saucepan with hot water reaching halfway up the sides.

  2. Cover the saucepan and steam the pudding for 2 hours, or until the custard is firm.

  3. Test the custard with a knife. If it stains, steam longer.

  4. Turn the pudding out of the mould.

  5. Serve with rum 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. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, giving the pudding its firm, sliceable structure.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and adds moisture and softness to the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps it set smoothly without becoming grainy.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the decorative fruit stick to the mould.
Sponge cake
Soaks up custard to give the pudding a tender, cake-like body between the fruit layers.

The step that matters

Steaming the pudding until the custard is set. Eggs set gently as they heat. Too little steaming leaves the custard runny, while steaming too hard or too long can make it curdle and turn rubbery, so the pudding is tested with a knife before turning out.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes