WHAT was Cabinet pudding?, we asked.

“I’ve got a recipe for it in a 1950s Home Management book, and it appears to be a posh version of Bread and Butter Pudding,” says Gillian Banks in Durham.

Ann Lake, in Ferryhill, County Durham, says: “It is in Successful Home Cooking by Lilian Mattingly, a cook book I was awarded as a school prize from Broom Cottages Modern School in Ferryhill in 1956- 57.” It is the Ferryhill recipe that is published on this page.

We won’t mention it, but in her email Ann actually wrote that she attended school in 1056, which means she is old enough to have fought in the Battle of Hastings.

However, Cabinet Pudding is certainly very old. John Husband, in Darlington, sends in a recipe from Mrs Beeton’s Household Management book, published in 1859.

Back in those early days, it was also known as Chancellor’s Pudding – so its name suggests that there was an exclusive, governmental feel to the dish.

This early recipe has slices of Savoy Cake or a French roll as its basis, with three tablespoons of sugar poured in.

Mrs Beeton seems to have refined her recipe over time and Eric Gendle, in Middlesbrough, sends a later version where the sugar is reduced to an ounce, the top is decorated with angelica and ratafia biscuits are included with the Savoy sponge.

Echo Memories is no Jamie Oliver, but Savoy cake appears to be a tender, plain sponge, angelica is green candied strips, and ratafia is a liquer flavoured with lemon peel and herbs such as nutmeg, cinnamon, clove, mint, rosemary and anise.

In this later version, Mrs Beeton adds half an ounce of dissolved gelatine, which makes the pudding set and so it turns into a Pouding de Cabinet Froid.

“When set, turn out by dipping the mould in and out of water just bearably hot, taking care not to dampen the tips of the sponge fingers; invert on to a serving dish and dislodge with one sharp jerk of the hand,” she says. Sounds easy.

Fascinatingly, Pam Pinkney sends in a recipe from her mother’s 1936 cookbook published by the Daily Express and called Economical Cookery and Menus for Every Day of the Week This was the time of the Great Depression. There’s no mention of luxurious alcohol in the recipe, and the Savoy cake and the ratafia biscuits have been replaced by “stale bread or cake, cut into dice”.

Many thanks to everyone who sent in a recipe. No one, though, admitted to tasting Cabinet Pudding.

If anyone is brave enough, please let us know how delicious it is.

CABINET PUDDING (Ferryhill version, serves 6 to 7 people)
Ingredients
5oz sponge fingers of cakes
3oz sugar
4oz sultanas
2oz glace cherries
1 pint of milk
Rum or Madeira
3 eggs
Method
Put the sultanas and the cherries in a bowl with a little rum or Madeira and let them soak, stirring them well with a fork. Butter a pudding basin and sugar it. Then line the bowl with
the spongefingers cut up in pieces: arrange the remainder in alternate layers with the cherries and sultanas and sugar. Make a custard with the milk and eggs and pour in slowly, so that thefingers get well soaked. Steam for an hour and serve with custard or any sweet sauce.