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Dessert

Cabinet Pudding

A steamed pudding made with milk, biscuits, eggs, spices, and a sauce of brandy, wine, cream, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Cabinet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard base

  1. Boil 1 pint of milk with lemon peel, cinnamon, cloves, bay leaf, and sugar until flavored.

  2. Let the milk cool, then strain it into the egg mixture.

Make the pudding

  1. In a bowl, break ¼ pound of ratafia biscuits and 8–9 sponge biscuits or stale cake.

  2. Pour brandy and a little white wine over the biscuits.

  3. Break 5 eggs into the mixture and mix well.

  4. Butter a plain mold well and decorate with dried cherries.

  5. Steam the pudding for 1½ hours.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, mix brandy, white wine, ½ cup cream, and a little lemon juice.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Cinnamon + biscuittop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together312 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Brandy + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together620 recipes

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

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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 the pudding into a firm, sliceable custard when steamed.
Milk
Provides the liquid that softens the biscuits and forms the custard base.
Sponge biscuits
Form the bulk of the pudding and soak up the liquid to hold its shape.
Ratafia biscuits
Add almond-like flavor and absorb the custard, adding soft texture to the pudding.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Let the milk cool before straining it into the eggs. Hot milk poured onto raw eggs can scramble them, leaving lumps instead of a smooth custard that sets evenly when steamed.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, cinnamon, clove, sugar, biscuit, brandy, white wine):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cinnamon, clove, sugar, biscuit, brandy, white wine. 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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