Skip to main content
Dessert

Cabinet Pudding

A steamed pudding made with sponge cakes, macaroons, milk, ratafias, raisins or cherries, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cabinet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil 1 pint of milk and sweeten it with lump sugar rubbed on the rind of a lemon.

  2. Once the milk is partly cool, add 4 beaten eggs.

Prepare the basin

  1. Grease a round basin with butter.

  2. Stick the raisins or cherries into the buttered basin.

Layer and steam

  1. Slice the sponge cakes and layer them in the basin with ratafias and macaroons.

  2. Pour the egg and milk mixture over the layered ingredients.

  3. Steam for 2 hours and serve with sweet 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  3. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard and bind the milk into a sliceable pudding when steamed.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that soaks into the layers and sets with the eggs.
Sponge cakes
Soak up the custard and give the pudding its soft, spongy body.
Lump sugar
Sweetens the milk so the custard tastes sweet throughout.

The step that matters

Add the eggs only once the milk is partly cool. Eggs begin to set around 70°C and can scramble if poured into very hot milk. Letting the milk cool first keeps the custard smooth so it sets evenly when steamed.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Raisinthe original

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

More cabinet pudding recipes

Cold 16Sauce 10Royal Iced 3 See all 177 →

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes