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Dessert

Cabinet Pudding

A steamed pudding made from sponge cake, ratafia biscuits, eggs, milk, sugar, vanilla, cherries, angelica, and jam sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

  1. Cut sponge cakes into small dice and crumble ratafia biscuits.

  2. Beat eggs with sugar, then add heated milk and vanilla essence.

  3. Strain mixture over the cake.

  4. Soak until completely cold.

Steam and serve

  1. Grease a plain mold and line the bottom with greased paper, decorating with pieces of cherry and angelica.

  2. Pour mixture into mold and steam steadily for 45 minutes to 1 hour until firm.

  3. Turn out of mold and pour jam sauce around pudding.

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

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

  5. Biscuit + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together422 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

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

Sponge cakes
Form the bulk of the pudding and absorb the custard, giving it body.
Eggs
Set when steamed, binding the custard so the pudding holds its shape.
Milk
Makes the custard liquid that soaks the cake and sets into a soft, tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and adds to its tender, delicate texture.

The step that matters

Steam steadily until firm. Steam must stay steady rather than boiling hard, because strong heat can make the egg custard curdle and turn the pudding spongy or watery. Gentle, even heat lets the eggs set evenly into a firm, smooth custard.

Swap the angelica

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Angelicathe original

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