Why it works: Butter and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓
Cabinet Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the mold
Butter a pudding mold well.
Stone the raisins and stick them around the mold.
Assemble and cook
Place the sponge cakes at the bottom of the mold.
Pour the hot custard over the sponge cakes.
Once cooled, cover with a cloth and boil for 1 hour.
Serve
Turn out the pudding and pour sweet sauce over it.
Serve with optional ratafia cakes for improvement.
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.
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Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together15,338 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Butter + raisintop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,630 recipes
Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).
-
Raisin + saucetop 26% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together297 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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
- Sponge cakes
- Form the base layer and soak up custard, giving the pudding its body.
- Custard
- Sets as it cools, binding the layers into a soft, creamy pudding.
- Raisins
- Add chewy sweetness and bursts of fruit flavour through the pudding.
- Butter
- Greases the mold so the pudding releases cleanly when turned out.
The step that matters
Letting the custard cool before boiling. Pouring the hot custard over the sponge and then cooking it gently after cooling lets the custard set rather than curdle or scramble. Boiling too hard or too early can make the texture grainy or cause the pudding to break apart.
Swap the raisin
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sauce):
- Coconutfits better
- Avocadofits better
- Peachfits better
- Raisinthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sauce. 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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