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Dessert

Cabinet Pudding

A steamed pudding made with sponge cakes, dried fruit, eggs, sugar, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Biscuit and raisin work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cabinet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mold

  1. Butter a pudding mold thoroughly.

  2. Arrange the cherries or raisins in a pattern around the top and sides of the mold.

  3. Break each sponge cake into four pieces and place them close to the fruit.

  4. Beat the eggs with a little sugar until well combined.

  5. Fill the mold with the egg mixture.

Steam and serve

  1. Cover the top of the mold with a cloth.

  2. Place the mold in a saucepan with boiling water up to the top of the mold. Ensure the lid of the saucepan fits tightly to retain steam.

  3. Boil for 30 minutes.

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 + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Biscuit + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,009 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Biscuit + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,874 recipes

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

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and set into a custard as they cook, holding the cake pieces together.
Sponge cakes or biscuits
Form the body of the pudding, soaking up the egg mixture as it sets.
Dried cherries or sultana raisins
Add pockets of concentrated sweetness and chewy texture in the finished pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the egg mixture and adds flavor to the custard.
Butter
Greases the mold so the set pudding releases cleanly.

The step that matters

Keep the steam tight and the water level right. Eggs set gently in steam; if the water boils dry or the lid lets steam escape, the water level drops and the custard can cook unevenly or turn rubbery. Keeping the water at the mold's top and the lid snug holds a steady, moist heat.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Lemonfits about as well
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against biscuit, egg, 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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