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Cabinet Pudding
894. Stone two dozen of large table raisins, butter a basin and stick them all over it, then fill up the basin with a thick custard made of milk, three or four eggs, about a tea-cupful of finely-grated bread, two table-spoonsful of sugar, a few chopped almonds, and any other flavour that is approved. Boil an hour and a half, and when turned out the raisins will be outside.
A steamed bread-and-custard pudding set in a lined basin, so that the fruit ends up on the outside when it is turned out. The original leaves the milk quantity to the cook's judgement, which is the main thing to settle before you start.
- "Boil" means steam"Boil" in a basin -- The basin is covered with buttered paper or foil and a cloth. Such puddings were both boiled in a covered basin standing in water and steamed on a trivet above it; either way, water at a rolling boil will curdle the custard and force it up past the cover, so keep it at a bare simmer and top up with boiling water as it falls.
- The custard proportionsNo milk quantity is given. For three or four eggs, about 3/4 pint imperial (15 fl oz, roughly 2 cups) of milk gives a custard firm enough to unmould; more than that and the pudding will slump. It should be thick enough to coat a spoon before it goes in the basin.
- A tea-cupfulTeacup measures were not standardised in this period, running from about a gill (5 fl oz) to 6 fl oz, so somewhere around two-thirds to three-quarters of a cup of fine fresh breadcrumbs, lightly packed. Dry packaged crumbs absorb differently and give a pasty texture; grate stale white bread instead.
- Table raisinsThese are large dessert raisins sold on the stem, muscatels or similar, chosen for looks as much as flavour. Ordinary raisins work but are small; jumbo flame raisins or halved prunes hold the pattern better. Press them cut-side to the buttered basin so they stick.
- AlmondsSweet almonds, blanched and chopped. Any older recipe calling for bitter almonds or almond flavouring in quantity should be read as almond extract used sparingly.
- Basin size and timingA 1 1/2 pint (imperial, approx. 850 ml) pudding basin suits these quantities. An hour and a half at a simmer is right for that size; test with a skewer at the centre, which should come out clean and hot.
- Turning outRest the basin five minutes off the heat, then run a knife round the rim and invert onto a warmed dish. Going straight from the pan tends to tear the fruit off the surface.
- Yield and servingServes four to six. It wants a pouring sauce: thin custard, or a sweet wine sauce, both standard accompaniments in books of this date.
Cabinet pudding belongs to the large family of British basin puddings, steamed or boiled rather than baked, that fed households before ovens were reliable and cheap to run. The origin of the name is uncertain; it is often connected to the sense of "cabinet" as something choice or select, but this is tradition rather than documented derivation. The dish appears in nineteenth-century books alongside near-identical recipes called chancellor's pudding and Newcastle pudding, the differences amounting largely to whether the base is bread, sponge cake or ratafia biscuits. What marks this version is the decorative lining: raisins pressed to the buttered basin so that the turned-out pudding arrives at table patterned, a small piece of theatre available to a cook with no mould and no icing. Recipes of this period routinely leave the liquid unmeasured in this way, on the assumption that the reader already knew what a thick custard looked like.