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Dessert

Muffin or Cabinet Pudding

A custard‑filled pudding made with soaked muffins, fruit, and a puff pastry seal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,115 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Muffin or Cabinet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the muffins in half.

  2. Pour boiling milk over them until covered.

  3. Let them soak until tender.

  4. Whisk eggs, cream, sugar, chopped almonds, lemon peel, nutmeg, and brandy together to make a custard.

  5. Grease a mold or baking dish with butter.

Assemble

  1. Layer dried cherries, green gages, apricots, or French plums in the bottom.

  2. Pour a layer of custard over the fruit.

  3. Add more fruit and custard until the mold is full.

  4. Seal the edges of the dish with puff pastry.

Cook

  1. Place the mold in a stew-pan with water reaching halfway up the sides.

  2. Boil for 1.5 hours or bake until set.

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. Almond + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  4. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard into a firm, sliceable structure as they cook.
Muffins
Soak up the milk and custard, giving the pudding a soft, tender body.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the custard.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps give the finished pudding a tender crumb.
Dried cherries
Add concentrated fruit sweetness and chewy, tart pieces between custard layers.
Blanched almonds
Add nutty flavor and a little fat to the custard.

The step that matters

Cooking the mold gently in water. Egg custard turns grainy or rubbery if it cooks too hot or too fast. Setting it in a water bath, with water only halfway up the sides, moderates the heat so the custard sets evenly and stays smooth.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, cream, sugar, almond, nutmeg, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, cream, sugar, almond, nutmeg, brandy. 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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