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Cabinet Pudding, Boiled
Put a pint of new milk into a saucepan with two table-spoonfuls of sugar and the rind of a lemon. Let it nearly boil, to extract the flavour of the lemon, then add to it four well-beaten eggs. Butter a mould rather thickly, and ornament it with stoned raisins, candied peel, or in any other way; then fill it with alternate layers of sliced sponge finger biscuits and crushed ratafias. Put in the biscuits lightly, so as not to disturb the ornamentation. When the mould is nearly full, and it is time to steam the pudding, pour the cold custard gradually over the cake. Put a piece of buttered writing paper over it, place it in a saucepan, and steam it gently for an hour. Serve with wine sauce. Probable cost, 1s. 2d. Sufficient for six persons.
A steamed bread-and-butter pudding in disguise: sponge fingers and ratafias bound with a lemon custard and turned out of a decorated mould. Nothing about it is difficult, but the custard is unforgiving of a hard boil.
- Keep the steam gentleThe hinge of the dish is heat control. The water in the pan should barely tremble; a rolling boil drives the custard past setting point and it will weep and honeycomb rather than slice cleanly. An hour at a bare simmer should be enough to set it through.
- The mould and the water bathA pint of milk with four eggs and the biscuits fills a 1.5-quart (about 1.5 litre) charlotte mould or pudding basin. "Place it in a saucepan" means standing the mould on a trivet or folded cloth in a deep pan with boiling water reaching halfway up the sides, lid on.
- Buttered writing paperOrdinary unglazed writing paper was the period's parchment. Use buttered baking parchment or foil, pleated across the middle to allow the pudding to rise, and tie it down so condensation cannot drip in.
- RatafiasSmall crisp almond macaroons, once flavoured with bitter almond. Amaretti are the closest thing on a modern shelf; use the hard Italian kind rather than the soft, and crush them coarsely so they keep some texture.
- Sponge finger biscuitsSavoiardi or ladyfingers. Stale ones behave better than fresh, since they absorb custard without collapsing into paste.
- Lemon rindPare the rind in strips with a peeler, avoiding the white pith, and infuse it in the hot milk for ten minutes off the heat. Strain the milk before whisking it into the eggs, and strain again after, to catch any thread of cooked white.
- Cold custard over the cakeThe instruction is deliberate. Adding the custard cold and gradually lets the biscuits drink it up without floating and dislodging the raisins pressed into the buttered mould.
- Turning outRest the pudding five to ten minutes off the heat before unmoulding, or the sides will slump. Run a knife round the rim and invert onto a warm dish.
- Wine sauce and yieldThe period sauce is sherry or madeira thickened with a little butter, sugar and sometimes an egg yolk, served warm and poured round. The book's six servings is honest for this size. The cost is given as 1s 2d.
Cabinet pudding appears under a small crowd of names in nineteenth-century books — chancellor's pudding, Newcastle pudding, diplomate when it is served cold — and the association with cabinets, chancellors and diplomats is generally taken to be a joke about a dish grand enough for official dinners while being built almost entirely from leftovers. That is its real character: stale sponge fingers, broken ratafias and a plain custard, redeemed by the theatre of a decorated mould. Cassell's belongs to a period when steamed and boiled puddings still filled much of the English sweet course, and a covered basin in a pan of water needed no oven. The cold version, set with gelatine or simply chilled and turned out, appears on later menus as pouding à la diplomate.