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Dessert

Newcastle or Cabinet Pudding

A steamed or baked bread pudding with butter, milk, vermicelli, eggs, dried fruit, lemon peel, cinnamon, and loaf sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,390 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Newcastle or Cabinet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mold

  1. Butter a melon mold or quart basin.

  2. Line the mold with dried cherries or raisins.

  3. Fill with layers of bread and butter.

  4. Steam for 1 hour.

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, boil ½ pint of milk with lemon peel and cinnamon.

  2. Sweeten the milk with loaf sugar.

  3. Strain the mixture through a sieve.

  4. Add ¼ pound of vermicelli.

  5. Boil the vermicelli for 10 minutes.

  6. Mix in the yolks of 5 eggs and the whites of 3 eggs, beaten stiff.

Finish

  1. Steam for 1 hour and 15 minutes or bake for 30 minutes.

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. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard and whites, beaten stiff, lighten the pudding so it sets softly.
Bread
Forms the absorbent body of the pudding that soaks up the custard as it sets.
Vermicelli
Adds body and starch to the milk mixture, helping it thicken and hold its shape.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that the eggs set in.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the milk mixture and adds to the pudding's flavour.
Butter
Enriches the bread layers and keeps them from sticking to the mold.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites stiff and folding them in. Stiff whites trap air that expands during cooking, giving lightness. Overmixing or deflating them makes the pudding dense and heavy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, raisin, bread, milk, cinnamon, sugar, 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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