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Dessert

Steamed Cup Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, baking powder, milk, and fruit, served in butter‑greased cups.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Steamed Cup Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grease 6 cups with butter.

  2. In a bowl, mix flour, baking powder, and salt.

  3. Add sweet milk and stir until combined.

Fill and steam

  1. Fill each cup halfway with the batter.

  2. Add your choice of fruit on top.

  3. Steam for 40 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with whipped cream or boiled sauce.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Milk + peachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + peachtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together860 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

Flour
Forms the main structure of the pudding as it sets during steaming.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the pudding rise and turn light and soft.
Sweet milk
Moistens the flour and forms the batter, giving the pudding its tender texture.
Fruit
Adds flavor and moisture to the top of each pudding as it steams.

The step that matters

Filling the cups halfway. Batter needs room to rise as the baking powder releases gas during steaming. Overfilling can cause the batter to spill over or make the pudding dense where it cannot expand freely.

Swap the peach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, milk, butter):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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