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Dessert

Cabinet Pudding

A steamed pudding made with cream, biscuits, almonds, and a buttery wine sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Biscuit and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 388 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Cabinet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard base

  1. Boil the cream or milk with the cinnamon stick and lemon peel for 10 minutes.

  2. Pour the mixture over the savoy cake or sponge biscuits and let it cool.

  3. Add the chopped Jordan almonds to the cooled mixture.

  4. Mix in the beaten egg whites and pour the mixture into the mold.

Prepare the mold

  1. Grease a mold with butter and line it with buttered paper.

  2. Place dried cherries on the bottom and sides of the mold.

Steam and serve

  1. Set the mold in a pot of boiling water and steam for 45 minutes.

  2. For the sauce, melt the butter in a pan, add flour, and stir until smooth. Gradually add white wine, brandy, and lemon juice, stirring until thickened.

  3. Serve the pudding with the 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. Biscuit + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together388 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Cinnamon + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  4. Cinnamon + biscuittop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together312 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Beaten whites set during steaming, giving the pudding its light, firm structure.
Savoy cake or sponge biscuits
Soak up the hot cream to form the body of the pudding.
Cream or milk
Provides moisture and richness that cooks into the custard-like crumb.
Flour
Thickens the butter and liquids into the sauce as it cooks.

The step that matters

Mixing in the beaten egg whites. Whites hold air only when beaten to stiff peaks and folded in gently; overmixing deflates them, leaving a dense pudding after steaming.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, cinnamon, biscuit, almond, egg, butter, sauce):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, cinnamon, biscuit, almond, egg, butter, sauce. 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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