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Dessert

Cuban Pudding

A steamed coconut pudding made with sponge cake, cream, sugar, eggs, and preserved ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Coconut and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,168 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Cuban Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. In a basin, combine the crumbled sponge cakes and grated coconut.

  2. In a saucepan, heat the cream with the sugar until boiling, then pour it over the cake mixture.

  3. Cover the basin and let it soak up the cream.

  4. Stir in the beaten eggs until well combined.

Mold and cook

  1. Butter a mold and arrange the preserved ginger around it.

  2. Carefully pour the pudding mixture into the mold and tie it down with a cloth.

  3. Steam or boil the pudding slowly for 1.5 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with warmed ginger syrup poured over the pudding.

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. Coconut + gingertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,168 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Coconut + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Sponge cakes
Crumbled cake forms the body of the pudding and soaks up the cream.
Grated coconut
Adds moisture, richness and a chewy texture to the pudding.
Rich cream
Provides fat and moisture, keeping the crumb soft after steaming.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set during cooking to give the pudding its structure.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the pudding and adds to its tender texture.

The step that matters

Steam or boil the pudding slowly for 1.5 hours. Gentle, steady heat lets the egg proteins set evenly into a tender custard-like crumb. Boiling hard or rushing can cause a rough, overcooked or cracked texture.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Turmericfits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against coconut, cream, sugar, egg, butter. 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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