Skip to main content
Dessert

Cable Pudding

A baked dessert made with sugar, butter, milk, eggs, flour, and leavening, topped with whipped egg whites and served with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Cable Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the cake

  1. In a bowl, mix sugar, melted butter, sweet milk, egg yolks, flour, cream of tartar, and baking soda until smooth.

  2. Divide the batter between two baking tins.

  3. Bake until golden brown.

Assemble and serve

  1. Once cooled, layer with sauce or jelly between the cakes.

  2. Beat the egg whites with a little sugar and flavoring until stiff peaks form.

  3. Spread the egg white mixture on top of the pudding.

  4. Serve with cream when cold.

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

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter for a tender crumb.
Cream of tartar
Stabilizes the whipped egg whites and works with baking soda to lift the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Egg whites
Whipped into a stiff foam that gives the topping its light, airy structure.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the batter into a cake as it bakes.
Melted butter
Adds fat for moistness and a tender texture in the cake.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to stiff peaks. Whites under-beaten or deflated by greasy residue or mixing will not hold air, so the topping turns dense and weeps. Beat in a clean, grease-free bowl until the peaks stand upright.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes