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Dessert

Steamed Cottage Pudding

A steamed pudding made with butter, milk, sugar, baking powder, egg, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Steamed Cottage Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix melted butter, milk, sugar, baking powder, egg, and flour until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam for 1 hour until cooked through.

  2. Serve warm or cold.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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 pudding as its starch and proteins set during steaming.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps set the crumb as it cooks.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, lightening the texture so the pudding rises.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender crumb to the pudding.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and adds moisture to the batter.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and contributes to its soft texture.

The step that matters

Steam until cooked through. Steaming gently sets the batter from the outside in. Lifting the lid too early or stopping before the centre sets can leave the pudding wet and dense in the middle.

“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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