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Cabinet Pudding, Rich
Butter a plain round mould; fill it with alternate layers of dried apricots or candied fruits of any kind, and crumbled macaroon and Savoy biscuits. Pour a wine-glassful of sherry or brandy over this; then make a custard of a pint of new milk and the well-beaten yolks of four eggs. When this is quite cold, pour it gently and very gradually over the biscuits. Cover the top of the mould with buttered paper, put it in a saucepan, and allow it to steam for one hour. Sufficient for four or five persons. Probable cost, 2s.
A steamed custard pudding built in layers, closer to a bread-and-butter pudding than to anything baked. The whole thing turns on keeping the water beneath it at a bare simmer.
- Gentle heat above allYolk custard sets at around 175-180F and curdles not far above that. The saucepan water should shiver rather than boil for the full hour; a hard boil will give you a grainy pudding weeping liquid when turned out.
- Savoy biscuitsThese are the light finger-shaped sponge biscuits sold now as ladyfingers or savoiardi. Any dry sponge finger works; avoid soft cake-like versions, which collapse into paste.
- MacaroonsNineteenth-century macaroons are crisp almond biscuits, not the coconut or the French sandwich sort. Almond amaretti are the closest match and give the pudding its scent.
- A wine-glassfulReckon about 2 fl oz, a quarter cup. Sherry gives a mellower result than brandy; either can be reduced without harming the set, since the custard does the binding.
- New milkSimply fresh whole milk, unskimmed and not long from the dairy. Whole milk is right; the four yolks to one pint are already a rich ratio and cream will make it heavy.
- Cold custard, poured slowlyThe instruction is deliberate. Warm custard would soften the biscuits into mush and float the fruit; cold custard added in stages lets each layer absorb before the next arrives. Give it ten minutes to soak in before it goes on the heat.
- The mould and its coverUse a pudding basin or charlotte mould of about 2 pints, buttered well. Buttered paper means a round of parchment tied down; add foil over it so condensation cannot drip in, and stand the mould on a trivet or folded cloth in the pan with water reaching halfway up.
- Turning out and servingRest it ten minutes off the heat before inverting, or the top layer tears away. Enough for four or five as written, and it wants a thin custard sauce or apricot syrup alongside.
Cabinet pudding turns up in English cookery books from the mid-nineteenth century under several names, including chancellor's pudding and diplomate pudding, and its ancestry is generally traced to the French pouding à la diplomate of the same period; why cabinets, chancellors and diplomats should all lay claim to it has never been settled. What is clear is its function in a Victorian household: it is a way of using up dry biscuit and stored dried and candied fruit in the middle of winter, dressed up with sherry and egg yolks into something fit for a dinner table. Cassell's marks this version "rich" to distinguish it from plainer cabinet puddings made with stale bread or plain sponge cake and no spirits. The stated cost of two shillings tells you it was company food rather than everyday.