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Dessert

Cabinet Pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, sponge cakes, ratafias, macaroons, candied citron, eggs, milk, cream, and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mold

  1. Remove pits from raisins or cherries and arrange them in a thickly buttered quart mold.

  2. Layer sliced sponge cakes on top of the fruit.

  3. Add ratafias, macaroons, and sliced candied citron.

Make the custard

  1. Whisk egg yolks and egg whites together, then mix with milk and strain.

  2. Combine strained mixture with sweet cream and powdered sugar, then pour into mold until full.

Cook and serve

  1. Steam or gently boil the pudding for one hour.

  2. Let it stand for a few minutes before serving with a good 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set firm when cooked.
Egg whites
Add structure and lightness to the custard as it sets.
Sponge cakes
Soak up the custard and hold the pudding together in layers.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, carrying moisture and softness.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and a smoother, silkier texture to the custard.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the custard and dissolves easily into the liquid mixture.

The step that matters

Filling the mold to the top before steaming. Eggs in the custard set as they heat, so the mold must be full with no large air gaps. Gentle steaming or simmering keeps the custard tender; boiling hard can make it porous or curdled.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

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