Skip to main content
Dessert

Cabinet Pudding

A layered fruit and sponge cake pudding with custard, baked in a water bath and served with sherry‑flavored syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Cabinet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mold

  1. Grease a pudding mold with butter.

  2. Garnish the bottom with raisins, sliced citron peel, and dried cherries.

  3. Layer sponge cakes, ratafias, macaroons, and fruits in the mold.

Make and cook the custard

  1. In a bowl, mix egg yolks, whole eggs, sugar, milk, sherry, and lemon rind to make an uncooked custard.

  2. Pour the custard into the mold over the layers.

  3. Simmer the pudding in nearly boiling water, ensuring it does not boil.

Serve

  1. Once done, turn it out onto a plate.

  2. Serve with syrup flavored with sherry.

  3. For Iced Cabinet Pudding, chill the pudding in ice before serving.

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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Milk + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg yolks and whole eggs set the custard, giving the pudding its structure as it cooks.
Sponge cakes
Soak up the custard and give the pudding a soft, cake-like body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the fruit and sherry.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, adding moisture and richness.
Sherry
Adds aroma and flavor to both the custard and the syrup.

The step that matters

Simmer the pudding in nearly boiling water, ensuring it does not boil.. Egg custard becomes grainy and full of holes if it boils. Gentle, steady heat lets the eggs set evenly into a smooth, tender pudding.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, raisin, egg, sugar, milk, sherry, syrup. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes