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Dessert

Cup Pudding

A small steamed or baked pudding made from flour, milk, egg, and sugar, baked in a buttered basin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Cup Pudding

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.

Make the custard base

  1. Mix flour and salt smoothly with cold water.

  2. Pour in boiling milk while stirring continuously.

  3. Once cool, strain the mixture to remove lumps.

  4. Add the beaten egg and sugar, mixing well.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour into a buttered basin and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 20 minutes.

  2. Turn out to serve. Optionally, add a little sherry for flavor.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Milk + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  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

Egg
Sets the custard as it cooks, giving the pudding its firm body.
Flour
Thickens the milk so the custard holds its shape when turned out.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the egg and flour set into a custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the custard brown lightly at the edges.

The step that matters

Strain after cooling. Straining removes lumps of cooked flour and any set egg, which would otherwise leave a grainy texture in the finished 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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