Cups of this type were originally intended for serving meat juices and similar reductions made from fish or vegetables. The shape is known as a 'pot à jus' in France. 'Jus' (literally 'juice') reduced or extracted from meat, fish and vegetables was an essential flavouring of eighteenth-century French savoury dishes, and these cups could have been used by diners to flavour their food, as well as for enjoying such juices drunk on their own. Some may also have been used for juices extracted from fruit. By the late eighteenth-century these pots were also known as 'pots à créme' and were used to serve custard. In England vessels of this form were used only for serving custard and other similar foodstuffs during the dessert course.

The shape was probably first made at the Saint-Cloud factory in France. They were later made at Vincennes-Sèvres (from 1753), and subsequently at many of the eighteenth century Western European porcelain factories. At Marieberg in Sweden, where this cup was made, they were known as 'jelly cups'. They were the factory's most popular production line: between 1772 and 1788 almost 16,000 cups with covers of this type were made (Ulla Stafford, Custard Cups and Pots à Jus, nd., p. 69 and passim).

The factory at Marieberg, on Kungsholmen in Stockholm, was set up in 1759 to make both tin-glazed earthenware and porcelain. However, commercial production of porcelain was not achieved until 1766, when Pierre Berthevin, a modeller from the porcelain factory at Mennecy in France, was appointed manager. This cup dates from a period after Berthevin's departure, when the factory was managed by Hendrik Sten from the rival Swedish Rörstrand pottery works, and when a chalky white-bodied porcelain was being produced. This chalky white-bodied material was not a true hard-paste porcelain, the production of which was only achieved at Marieberg in 1777-78, when a workman from the Berlin porcelain factory was employed. The factory at Marieberg probably ceased manufacture before 1782, when the works were sold.