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Dessert

Muffin or Cabinet Pudding

A boiled pudding made from soaked muffins, custard, fruit, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,115 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Muffin or Cabinet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the muffins in half.

  2. Pour boiling milk over them to cover.

  3. Cover the vessel and let them soak until cold.

Make the custard

  1. Prepare a rich custard by whisking together the eggs, cream, sugar, chopped almonds, nutmeg, lemon peel, and ratafia or brandy.

  2. Grease a tin mold or pie dish with butter.

Assemble and cook

  1. Layer dried cherries, green grapes, apricots, or French plums in the dish.

  2. Cover with custard.

  3. Repeat layers until the dish is full.

  4. Tie the mold securely.

  5. Boil in a pot for 1.5 hours, ensuring it does not float.

  6. Add water as needed to keep it half submerged.

  7. If baking, reduce the cooking time slightly.

  8. Line the edges with puff pastry.

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. Almond + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Muffins
Soak up the hot milk and form the bulk of the pudding's soft, absorbent structure.
Eggs
Set the custard, giving it structure and a rich, tender texture when cooked.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, making the custard smooth and tender.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps it brown lightly during cooking.
Ratafia or brandy
Adds aromatic flavour to the custard.
Dried cherries
Add concentrated sweetness and fruit flavour between the custard layers.

The step that matters

Boil in a pot for 1.5 hours, ensuring it does not float.. Eggs set gently in moist, steady heat. If the mold floats or boils too hard, the water can get in and the custard may come out watery or uneven.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, cream, sugar, almond, nutmeg, brandy):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, cream, sugar, almond, nutmeg, brandy. 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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