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Dessert

Cabinet Pudding

Cabinet Pudding is a bread custard pudding made with sliced French roll, milk, cinnamon, sugar, lemon peel, eggs, and optional almond extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,514 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Cabinet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Soak the sliced French roll in a custard made by boiling milk with cinnamon, sugar, and lemon peel.

  2. Once boiling, pour the milk mixture over the beaten eggs and stir for 2-3 minutes.

Assemble the mold

  1. Butter a mold generously and line it with dried cherries, raisins, candy peel, and citron.

  2. Add a few drops of almond extract to the custard if desired.

  3. Fill the mold with the soaked bread and custard mixture.

Steam and serve

  1. Cover the top with buttered paper and steam for 1 hour.

  2. Serve with brandy 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. Cinnamon + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  5. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

French roll
Soaks up the custard and forms the body of the pudding.
Eggs
Set when heated, giving the pudding its firm, custardy structure.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, adding moisture and softness.
Lump sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the richness of the eggs and milk.
Dried cherries or raisins
Add sweetness, chewiness, and fruity moisture within the pudding.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot milk over the eggs. Hot milk can scramble beaten eggs if added too quickly. Pouring slowly while stirring gently warms the eggs evenly, keeping the custard smooth and properly thickened.

“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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