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Dessert

Cabinet Pudding

A pudding made from crumbled sponge cakes, almond biscuits, milk, eggs, citron, sugar, and flavored with lemon or vanilla, baked or steamed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and biscuit match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 388 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Cabinet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Crumble the sponge cakes and almond biscuits into a bowl.

  2. Pour the milk over the crumbled cakes and biscuits.

  3. Chop the citron very finely and mix it into the mixture.

  4. Butter the mold and decorate it with angelica and cherries.

Make and cook the pudding

  1. Beat the eggs with the sugar until well combined, then add the lemon or vanilla extract.

  2. Mix the egg mixture with the cake mixture thoroughly.

  3. Boil or steam the mixture for 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Serve with or without sweet 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. Almond + biscuittop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together388 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Lemon + angelicatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together189 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Almond + angelicatop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together135 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and set into a firm, sliceable pudding when cooked.
Sponge cakes
Provide the bulk and soft crumb that the milk and eggs soak into.
Milk
Moistens the crumbs and forms the custard that sets the pudding.
Almond biscuits
Add dense crumb and a toasty almond flavour to the base.

The step that matters

Combining the egg mixture with the cake mixture. Eggs must be fully blended into the soaked crumbs so the mixture sets evenly; uneven mixing leaves pockets of loose custard or dry crumb in the finished pudding.

Swap the angelica

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Angelicathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, biscuit, egg, milk, sugar, lemon, 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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