Why it works: Butter and milk 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
Grease a pudding mold with butter.
Line the bottom with dried cherries or halved raisins.
Add a layer of macaroons and ratafia drops.
Place slices of sponge cake over the bottom layer.
Line the sides of the mold with sponge cake or sugar biscuits.
Half-fill the mold with bits of cake and optional candied fruit.
In a bowl, mix eggs, milk, sugar, and cognac or liqueur to make custard.
Pour some custard over the cake in the mold.
Add more cake to fill the mold, then pour in the remaining custard.
Cover the top with buttered paper.
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 + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Raisin + biscuittop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together12,481 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Raisin + milktop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,155 recipes
Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).
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Butter + biscuittop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,009 recipes
Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the raisin
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, biscuit, egg, milk):
- Vanillafits better
- Coconutfits about as well
- Figfits about as well
- Raisinthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, biscuit, egg, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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