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Dessert

Cabinet Pudding

A steamed pudding made with stale cake, dried fruit, milk, eggs, sugar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,180 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, creamy. The science ↓

Cabinet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mold

  1. Butter a pudding mold and sprinkle the bottom with mixed dried fruit.

  2. Cover with a layer of stale cake cut into slices; repeat layers, finishing with cake on top.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the eggs, then add sugar, salt, and milk.

  2. Pour the mixture over the cake in the mold, cover, and let it stand for 1 hour.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam for 1½ hours and serve hot with a light pudding 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. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

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

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the custard and set it into a firm, sliceable pudding when steamed.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that soaks into the cake and moistens it.
Stale cake
Provides the bulk and structure that the custard soaks into and holds in place.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the custard and balances the salty and dried-fruit flavors.

The step that matters

Letting the custard stand before steaming. Resting lets the stale cake absorb the milk and egg mixture evenly, so the pudding sets uniformly rather than leaving dry pockets or a soggy base.

Swap the currant

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

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

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