Name: Cup Puddings
Ingredients: 1 tablespoon sugar; 1 tablespoon melted butter; 1 small cup milk; a pinch of salt; 2 teaspoons baking powder; flour (enough to make a thick batter); preserved fruit; cream or fruit juice sauce (for serving)

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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

In a bowl, mix sugar, melted butter, milk, salt, baking powder, and enough flour to create a thick batter.

Fill and steam

Place a small spoonful of batter in a cup.
Add a tablespoon of preserved fruit on top.
Cover with another small spoonful of batter.
Steam for about 45 minutes.

Serve

Serve with cream or a sauce made from the fruit juice.

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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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 thick batter that gives each pudding its body and structure.
Baking powder: Releases gas in the batter so the puddings rise and turn light.
Butter: Adds fat that enriches the batter and softens its texture.
Milk: Moistens the batter and helps bind it into a smooth mixture.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown lightly while cooking.

“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.