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Dessert

Cuban Pudding

A steamed pudding made from crumbled sponge cake, grated coconut, cream, sugar, eggs, and preserved ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Coconut and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,168 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Cuban Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Combine the crumbled sponge cakes and grated coconut in a basin.

  2. Heat the cream with the sugar in a saucepan until boiling.

  3. Pour the hot cream over the cake mixture.

  4. Cover the basin.

  5. Let the mixture soak up the cream.

  6. Stir in the well-beaten eggs.

Prepare the mold

  1. Butter a mold.

  2. Arrange the preserved ginger around the mold.

  3. Carefully pour the pudding mixture into the mold.

  4. Tie the mold down with a cloth.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam or boil slowly for 1.5 hours.

  2. Serve the pudding.

  3. Pour warmed ginger syrup over the pudding.

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. Coconut + gingertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,168 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  3. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  4. Coconut + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,223 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Sponge cakes
Soak up the cream and give the pudding its body and structure.
Grated coconut
Adds moisture, richness and a characteristic coconut flavor and texture.
Cream
Supplies moisture and richness, softening the cake as it soaks.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set during gentle cooking to hold the pudding together.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the cream and adds sweetness to the pudding.
Preserved ginger
Provides spicy, aromatic flavor, and its syrup is poured over at serving.

The step that matters

Steam or boil slowly. Eggs set when heated gently; cooking too fiercely can cause the pudding to boil, become rough and spongy, or split. Slow, steady heat keeps the custard-like texture smooth and the mold tight under its cloth.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Turmericfits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

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