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Dessert

Simple Cup Pudding

A steamed pudding made with treacle, milk, raisins, butter, flour, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Simple Cup Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Warm the milk.

  2. Dissolve the butter in the milk.

  3. Stone the raisins and cut them in halves.

  4. Mix the baking powder with the flour.

  5. Boil the treacle and skim it.

Mix and steam

  1. Stir the warm treacle into the flour.

  2. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix well.

  3. Turn into a buttered mold or cups.

  4. Steam for 2 hours if using one mold, or 1 hour if using cups.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

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
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it steams.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the pudding rise and turn light.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender texture to the pudding.
Treacle
Adds sweetness, dark colour and a deep molasses flavour.
Milk
Moistens the flour and helps form a smooth batter.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Stirring the warm treacle into the flour. Treacle that is too hot or too cold changes how the batter mixes. Warm treacle blends evenly, so the batter stays smooth rather than lumpy or uneven once steamed.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, flour):

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Coconutfits less well
  4. Figfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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