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Dessert

Cup Pudding

A small steamed pudding made with flour, milk, and jam, served hot with cream or sugar.

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 ↓

Cup Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grease small cups.

  2. Sift the flour, salt, and baking powder into a bowl.

Make and fill the puddings

  1. Stir in the milk quickly until mixed evenly.

  2. Add a little butter to each cup, spreading it up the sides to create a well.

  3. Place a large teaspoon of jam in the well and cover with batter.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam for 35 minutes, then turn out.

  2. Serve hot with cream and sugar or a pudding 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. 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).

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 batter structure that holds the pudding's shape while steaming.
Baking powder
Releases gas during steaming, helping the puddings rise and turn light.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and gives the batter its moisture and soft texture.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the crumb and helps the batter release from the cup.
Jam
Adds sweetness and fruity flavour in a pocket inside the pudding.

The step that matters

Stir in the milk quickly until mixed evenly. Once liquid meets flour and baking powder, the leavening starts reacting. Mixing quickly and only until combined keeps the gas bubbles intact and avoids overworking the gluten, which would make the pudding tough.

“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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