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Dessert

Cold Cabinet Pudding

A chilled dessert made with sponge finger biscuits, ratafias, milk, gelatin, egg yolks, dried cherries, angelica, cream, vanilla, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Biscuit and angelica share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 69 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cold Cabinet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mold

  1. Decorate the bottom of a pint mold with dried cherries and pieces of angelica.

  2. Split the sponge biscuits in half and line the sides of the mold with them and the ratafias, alternating their arrangement.

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, beat the yolks of the eggs with a wooden spoon until well mixed.

  2. Stir in 1½ cups of milk and pour the mixture into a jug.

  3. Fill a saucepan half full of hot water and bring it to a boil, then move it to the side of the heat.

  4. Place the jug in the saucepan and stir the custard gently until it thickens to a cream-like consistency, ensuring it does not boil.

  5. In a small saucepan, combine 1½ oz of gelatin with 1 tablespoon of water and heat gently until melted.

  6. Once the custard is thickened, remove the jug from the saucepan and let it cool.

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. Biscuit + angelicatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together69 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Angelica + vanillatop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together170 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  5. Biscuit + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together422 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

Vanilla and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 yolks
Thicken the custard as they set gently over heat, giving it a rich, creamy body.
Gelatine
Sets the custard so the pudding holds its shape when turned out of the mold.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, carrying the yolks and setting into a creamy texture.
Sponge finger biscuits
Absorb moisture and hold their shape, forming the structure lining the mold.

The step that matters

Thickening the custard over water. Egg yolks scramble if they get too hot. Keeping the water below a boil and stirring gently lets the custard thicken smoothly, without curdling into lumps.

Swap the angelica

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Angelicathe original
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against biscuit, milk, egg, cream, vanilla, 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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