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Dessert

Cottage Pudding

A baked batter of sugar, milk, butter, flour, and eggs, served with a boiled milk and butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

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.

Make the cake

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

  2. In a bowl, mix sugar, milk, butter, baking powder, egg, and flour until smooth.

  3. Pour the batter into a greased pan and bake until golden.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, beat the egg white until stiff.

  2. Gradually add cornstarch and powdered sugar, continuing to beat.

  3. Add the egg yolk and mix well.

  4. Pour in the boiling milk and add butter, then bring to a boil and flavor as desired.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and the beaten white gives the sauce its airy lift.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, causing the cake to rise and become light.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavor in both the cake and the sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown as it bakes.
Cornstarch
Thickens the sauce and helps stabilize the beaten egg white mixture.

The step that matters

Beat the egg white until stiff. Beating incorporates air into the protein, forming a foam that gives the sauce lightness. Beat until stiff peaks form, then add the cornstarch and sugar gradually so the foam stays stable rather than collapsing.

“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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