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Dessert

Cup Puddings

A baked custard-like dessert made with eggs, sugar, flour, butter, milk, baking soda, and hot water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cup Puddings

six small cups

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. Rub the sugar and butter together until creamy.

  2. Beat the egg yolks until light, then add the milk and dissolved baking soda.

  3. Gradually mix in the flour and beaten egg whites alternately.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill six well-buttered small cups with the mixture.

  2. Bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown.

  3. Serve warm.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg whites add lift and structure, while yolks add richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten network that gives the pudding its body once baked.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps it brown during baking.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender texture and a rich flavour.
Baking soda
Reacts to create gas bubbles that help the pudding rise and open up its crumb.

The step that matters

Gradually mixing in the flour and beaten egg whites alternately. Folding the whites in gently in alternating additions keeps the air bubbles they hold intact. Overmixing deflates the whites and toughens the flour's gluten, which leads to a dense pudding.

“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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