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Baking

Cup Puddings

Small baked puddings made from flour, sugar, butter, egg, and milk, served hot with sweet sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderately quick oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together with a wooden spoon.

  2. Break the egg into the mixture and beat well.

  3. Mix the two flours thoroughly and gradually add to the other ingredients while beating.

  4. Add a little milk to achieve the desired consistency.

Prepare the molds

  1. Grease seven or eight small tin molds and dust them with flour.

  2. Half fill the molds with the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for about twenty minutes.

  2. Turn out and serve hot with sweet 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. 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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 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

Flour
Provides the structure that sets the batter into a firm, cake-like crumb when baked.
Paisley flour
Adds body and structure to the batter alongside the main flour.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender texture and rich flavour.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps it set as it bakes.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps it cream with the butter to trap air.

The step that matters

Adding the milk. Milk should be added only a little at a time to reach the desired consistency. Too much liquid thins the batter, so the puddings may spread and bake up dense or unevenly set.

“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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