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Dessert

Cabinet Pudding

A steamed pudding made with sponge biscuits, ratafias, dried cherries, custard, and served with a sauce of potato flour, milk, sugar, nutmeg, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Biscuit and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 368 recipes. Both carry maltol, which smells caramel, sweet. The science ↓

Cabinet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and fill the mold

  1. Grease a mold with butter and line it with buttered paper.

  2. Stick dried cherries on the paper.

  3. Mask the bottom with sponge biscuits and ratafias.

  4. Fill the mold with layers of sponge biscuits, ratafias, and dried cherries.

  5. Pour in hot light custard until full.

Steam the pudding

  1. Place the mold in a stewpan with hot water and steam for just over an hour.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Dilute 2 teaspoons of potato flour in ½ pint of milk.

  2. Add sugar and nutmeg to taste, and a little brandy.

  3. Serve the pudding with the sauce.

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 + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together368 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Biscuit + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together889 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard into a firm, sliceable pudding as they cook gently.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and the sauce, giving a smooth texture.
Sponge biscuits
Soak up the custard and hold the layers together as the pudding steams.
Potato flour
Thickens the milk so the sauce pours smoothly and holds its body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the rich custard and the spice.

The step that matters

Steaming the pudding. Steam heat must stay gentle so the egg custard sets evenly. Overheating causes it to curdle or turn rubbery and full of holes.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

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