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Dessert

Cabinet Pudding

A steamed pudding made with milk custard, fruit, and layers of stale sponge cake.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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

Prepare

  1. Beat the eggs, sugar, and salt together in a bowl.

  2. Add the milk and mix well.

  3. Sprinkle a pudding mold with cake crumbs.

Assemble and steam

  1. Layer the fruit and then more cake crumbs, repeating until all ingredients are used.

  2. Pour the custard mixture over the layers and let it stand for 2 hours.

  3. Steam the pudding for 1.5 hours.

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 + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  5. Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard so the cake and fruit hold together as the pudding cooks.
Stale sponge cake
Forms the body of the pudding, soaking up the custard to become tender.
Milk
Makes up the liquid custard that moistens and binds the cake and fruit.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the richness of the eggs and milk.
Butter
Adds fat for a richer flavor and softer texture in the finished pudding.

The step that matters

Pour the custard mixture over the layers and let it stand for 2 hours. Standing lets the stale cake fully absorb the liquid custard before steaming. Without this soaking, dry patches remain and the pudding can set unevenly.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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