Skip to main content
Dessert

Cabinet Pudding

A steamed pudding made with eggs, milk, sponge cakes, sugar, and flavored with cherries, angelica, and vanilla.

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

Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Cabinet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the milk.

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks and egg whites together.

  3. Quickly stir the hot milk into the egg mixture.

  4. Add the sponge cakes, sugar, ratafias, and flavoring.

Steam and serve

  1. Butter a round cake tin and decorate it with cherries and angelica.

  2. Pour the mixture into the tin and steam gently for one hour.

  3. Turn the pudding onto a hot dish and pour jam sauce or custard around it.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Angelica + vanillatop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together170 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks and whites
Set the custard and give the pudding its structure as it steams.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs set into a soft custard.
Sponge cakes
Soak up the custard and form the body of the pudding.
Castor sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the set eggs.

The step that matters

Steam gently. Egg-based custards become grainy, spongy, or watery if they boil. Gentle steaming heats the eggs slowly so they set into a smooth, tender pudding.

Swap the angelica

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Clovefits about as well
  4. Angelicathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, sugar, vanilla. 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

Vanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipes