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Dessert

Cabinet Pudding

A fruit and sponge cake pudding made by layering cake, fruit, and egg yolk mixture, then steaming.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the mold

  1. Butter a melon mold and sprinkle half of the fruit around the bottom.

Assemble

  1. Layer the broken sponge cake in the mold, adding a little fruit between layers.

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks, sugar, and salt together.

  3. Add the scalded milk to the egg mixture and pour it over the cake in the mold.

  4. Let the pudding stand for 1 hour.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam the pudding for 1½ hours.

  2. Serve with lemon sauce or creamy 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. Raisin + rhubarbtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together47 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  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
Bind the milk custard so the pudding sets into a soft, sliceable texture when steamed.
Sponge cake
Acts as the body of the pudding, soaking up the custard to form a tender, spongy structure.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, providing moisture that the cake absorbs and the yolks set.
Mixed fruit
Adds chewy pockets of sweetness and texture distributed through the cake layers.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and adds to its flavor balance against the fruit.

The step that matters

Steaming the pudding. Steam gently and keep the water at a simmer, not a hard boil. High heat can make the egg custard curdle and turn grainy or porous instead of silky and set.

Swap the rhubarb

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Rhubarbthe original

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