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Dessert

Tea Cup Pudding

A steamed pudding made with corn flour, milk, sugar, egg, and butter, served in a cup.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, mix corn flour and milk.

  2. Add sugar and salt, and stir over medium heat for 5 minutes.

  3. In a bowl, beat the egg and add it to the mixture, stirring until well combined.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased cup and cover with greased paper.

  2. Steam for 1 hour, then 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. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

Corn flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, set custard as it heats.
Egg
Adds structure and richness, helping the pudding set when cooked.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and adds creaminess.
Butter
Adds richness and a soft, tender texture to the pudding.

The step that matters

Stirring the custard over medium heat. Corn flour thickens only when heated with liquid, and stirring keeps it smooth and prevents lumps or scorching on the base of the pan.

“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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