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Dessert

Cabinet Pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, currants, lemon peel, milk, bread crumbs, eggs, and lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,180 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, creamy. The science ↓

Cabinet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Butter a mold and line it with stained raisins.

  2. Boil the milk with a piece of lemon peel, then remove the peel.

  3. Pour the milk over the bread-crumbs or bread and butter and let it soak for 30 minutes.

Make and steam the pudding

  1. Add the eggs, currants, and lemon and citron peel, then mix well.

  2. Pour the mixture into the mold, cover closely with buttered paper, and steam for 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. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  2. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Raisin + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and set it into a firm, sliceable custard as it steams.
Bread-crumbs or bread and butter
Soak up the milk and give the pudding its body and crumb structure.
Milk
Provides the liquid that soaks the bread and cooks with the eggs into a custard.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy fruit pieces throughout the pudding.
Currants
Add tart, chewy fruit flavour and small bursts of sweetness.

The step that matters

Steaming the pudding gently. Steam keeps the egg custard moist and evenly set. Boiling or high heat can make the eggs curdle and turn the texture rubbery or watery.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, currant, milk, bread, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, currant, milk, bread, egg. 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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