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Plain Cabinet Pudding

A steamed pudding made from bread crusts, raisins, milk, eggs, sugar, and vanilla, served with sweet sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Plain Cabinet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the basin

  1. Butter a basin well and stir the raisins, decorating the basin with them.

  2. Cut the bread crusts into dice and place them in the basin.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the eggs and mix in the milk, sugar, and vanilla.

  2. Pour the mixture over the bread in the basin and let it soak for a while.

Steam and serve

  1. Cover the top with a fold of buttered paper.

  2. Place the basin on a fold of paper in a saucepan with boiling water, enough to come halfway up the basin.

  3. Cover with a lid and steam for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

  4. Serve with sweet sauce poured over.

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

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (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

Eggs
Set the custard and bind the bread into a firm, sliceable pudding.
Bread crusts
Absorb the milk and egg mixture, forming the soft body of the pudding.
Milk
Moistens the bread and forms the liquid custard that sets when steamed.
Butter
Greases the basin so the pudding releases cleanly after steaming.

The step that matters

Steam with the water halfway up the basin. Gentle, moist steam heats the custard evenly so it sets without curdling or drying. Boiling water too high or a rapid boil can make the pudding rough or spongy.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, sugar, vanilla, 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.

More bread pudding recipes

Apple 145Chocolate 53Brown 51Fruit 44Lemon 37Steamed 29 See all 1,021 →

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