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Dessert

Cabinet Pudding

A steamed pudding made with broken cake, raisins, peaches, eggs, milk, and sugar, topped with a slice of bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Peach and milk work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 781 recipes. Both carry phellandrene, which smells minty. The science ↓

Cabinet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mold

  1. Butter a plain pudding mold.

  2. Layer some broken cake, one-third of the raisins, and one-third of the peaches in the mold.

  3. Repeat with the remaining cake, raisins, and peaches.

  4. Cover with a thin slice of bread.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the milk with the eggs and sugar, then pour over the layers in the mold.

Steam and serve

  1. Place the mold in a saucepan of boiling water, reaching two-thirds up the side of the mold.

  2. Steam for 45 minutes.

  3. Carefully turn out onto a dish and serve with peach 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. Peach + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

  2. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  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

Eggs
Set the milk mixture into a firm, sliceable custard as it steams.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that soaks into the cake and sets.
Broken cake
Absorbs the custard and forms the soft, spongy body of the pudding.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture between the cake layers.
Peaches
Add fruity moisture and sweetness throughout the layers.

The step that matters

Steaming the mold in water. The water bath should reach two-thirds up the mold so the custard heats gently and evenly. Too much heat can make the eggs curdle and turn the custard grainy or rubbery.

Swap the peach

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits better
  4. Peachthe original

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