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Dessert

Cabinet Pudding

A steamed pudding made with Savoy biscuits, milk, cream, eggs, sugar, and topped with cherries and angelica.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 the mould

  1. Butter a plain mould and line the sides with Savoy biscuits.

  2. Fill the centre of the mould with a few ratafias and spongecake crumbs, about three-quarters full.

Make and steam the pudding

  1. Beat the eggs and sugar together, then add the milk and pour into the mould.

  2. Let the pudding stand for 10 minutes.

  3. Steam gently until set, about 30 minutes.

Decorate

  1. Decorate the top with cherries and angelica.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Biscuit + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, giving the pudding its structure.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the eggs set into a soft custard.
Savoy biscuits
Absorb the custard and hold their shape, forming the pudding's outer structure.

The step that matters

Steam gently until set. Eggs set at gentle heat; high heat or boiling water can overcook them, making the custard curdled, spongy or watery.

Swap the angelica

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against biscuit, milk, cream, sugar, egg, butter. 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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