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Dessert

Tea-cup Pudding

A steamed pudding made with cornflour, milk, sugar, egg, and butter.

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 ↓

Tea-cup Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Mix the cornflour with a little milk until smooth.

  2. Add the remaining milk, sugar, and salt, then stir in a saucepan over medium heat for about 5 minutes.

  3. Beat the egg and mix it into the mixture thoroughly.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased cup, cover with greased paper, and steam slowly for 30 minutes.

  2. Let it stand for 5 minutes before turning it out.

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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Cornflour
Starch swells when heated in the milk, thickening the mixture into a set custard.
Egg
Proteins set during steaming, giving the pudding a firm, tender structure.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that carries the starch and egg and keeps the pudding moist.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the custard.

The step that matters

Stirring the cornflour mixture over heat. Cornflour only thickens once its starch granules are heated in liquid while stirring. Stirring prevents lumps, and cooking fully removes the raw starch taste and ensures the custard sets properly.

“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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