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Dessert

Cottage Pudding

A sweet baked pudding made with sugar, butter, egg, milk, flour, baking powder, served with a butter, sugar, wine sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Cottage Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the batter

  1. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and melted butter.

  3. Add the egg and sweet milk, mixing well.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the baking powder and flour.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until smooth.

  6. Pour the batter into a greased baking dish and bake for about 30-40 minutes.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the sugar and wine, then add a little boiling water until it foams.

  3. Serve the pudding warm with the sauce drizzled on top.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Forms the structure of the cake-like pudding as the batter sets.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and richness to the crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the heat, helping the pudding rise and stay light.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour in both the batter and the sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning in the batter and the sauce.

The step that matters

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture. Adding flour in portions and stirring just until smooth keeps the batter even and limits gluten development, which would otherwise make the pudding tough.

“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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