Skip to main content
Dessert

A Richer Cabinet Pudding

A rich custard pudding made with cream, egg yolks, brandy, sponge biscuits, macaroons, dried fruit, and powdered sugar, steamed in a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Brandy and apricot work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 513 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

A Richer Cabinet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil ¾ pint of cream.

  2. Mix ¼ pint of cold cream with 6 well‑beaten egg yolks and ⅓ cup of brandy.

  3. Pour the boiling cream over the egg mixture, stirring until it becomes a custard.

Assemble and steam

  1. Butter a plain mold and line it with dried cherries and slices of dried apricots or peaches in a pattern.

  2. Lightly add 4 ounces of sponge biscuits and 2 ounces of macaroons, sprinkling 1 ounce of powdered sugar among them.

  3. Fill the mold with the cold custard.

  4. Tie up the mold and steam for 1 hour.

  5. Let it stand for a few minutes.

Serve

  1. Turn out carefully and serve with wine sauce or a puree of currants and raspberries.

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. Brandy + apricottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together513 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Biscuit + apricottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together109 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Cream + biscuittop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Cream + brandytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,635 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Set the custard and give it a rich, smooth structure as they cook.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the custard a smooth, tender texture.
Sponge biscuits
Soak up the custard and form the soft body of the pudding.
Macaroons
Add almond flavour and chewy texture among the soaked crumb.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour to the custard.

The step that matters

Pour the boiling cream over the egg mixture, stirring until it becomes a custard.. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently but can scramble if the hot cream is added too fast or unstirred. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly so the custard stays smooth.

Swap the apricot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, egg, brandy, biscuit, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Apricotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, egg, brandy, biscuit, sugar. 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 cabinet pudding recipes

Cold 16Sauce 10Royal Iced 3 See all 177 →

You might also like

Baking Powder BiscuitBaking Powder Biscuit119 recipesBrandy PeachesBrandy Peaches68 recipesSour Milk BiscuitSour Milk Biscuit27 recipesApricot Ice CreamApricot Ice Cream26 recipes