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Dessert

Cold Cabinet Pudding

A chilled custard pudding made with Savoy biscuits, ratafias, cream, egg yolks, and flavored with vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Biscuit and angelica share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 69 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cold Cabinet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the mold as directed for Charlotte Russe.

Make the custard

  1. Heat the milk and sugar until nearly boiling, then stir into the beaten egg yolks.

  2. Return to the heat and stir until the mixture thickens, but do not let it boil.

  3. Dissolve the gelatine in 1 or 2 tablespoons of water and add it to the custard.

  4. When nearly cold, stir in the cream and flavor with vanilla to taste.

Assemble and chill

  1. Place the ratafias and trimmings of the Savoy biscuits in the mold.

  2. Pour the custard mixture over the biscuits when it is cold and just starting to set.

  3. Refrigerate until firm.

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. Biscuit + angelicatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together69 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Biscuit + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  4. Biscuit + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Biscuit + milktop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,332 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness as they set with gentle heat.
Gelatine
Sets the custard so it holds its shape when chilled and unmolded.
Cream
Adds richness and a soft, smooth texture to the set custard.
Savoy biscuits
Soak up custard and form the structure that holds the pudding together.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and carries its sweetness and flavor.

The step that matters

Thickening the custard without boiling. Egg yolks scramble and curdle if they get too hot, so the custard must be stirred gently over low heat until it thickens and never boils.

Swap the angelica

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Angelicathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against biscuit, sugar, milk, cream, 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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