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Dessert

Cabinet Pudding

A steamed custard pudding made with milk, egg yolks, whites, ratafias, sugar, vanilla, cherries, angelica, and lined with sponge cake or Savoy biscuits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Biscuit and angelica share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 69 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cabinet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mould

  1. Butter a mould with straight sides.

  2. Ornament the bottom with strips of angelica and halved cherries.

  3. Line the sides with narrow strips of sponge cake or Savoy biscuits.

  4. Break the trimmings of the cake or 6 to 8 biscuits into small pieces and place them in the mould with the ratafias.

Make and steam the custard

  1. Beat the egg yolks and whites, then add the sugar, vanilla, and milk.

  2. Stir until the sugar is dissolved, then pour the custard slowly into the mould.

  3. Cover with buttered paper and steam gently for nearly 1 hour.

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 + angelicatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together69 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Vanilla + angelicatop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together170 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and give it a rich, set texture when steamed.
Egg whites
Add structure and lightness to the custard, helping it set with a tender texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, providing moisture that the eggs set into.
Sponge cake or savoy biscuits
Absorb custard as it sets, giving the pudding a soft, cake-like body.
Ratafia biscuits
Add a concentrated almond flavour and chewy texture pockets within the custard.

The step that matters

Steaming the custard gently. Egg custard turns grainy, watery, or spongy if it boils. Gentle steam heat lets the egg proteins set evenly into a smooth, tender pudding.

Swap the angelica

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Angelicathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, biscuit, sugar, vanilla, 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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