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Dessert

Cottage Pudding

A baked pudding made with sugar, sweet milk, melted butter, cream of tartar, baking soda, and sifted flour.

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 ↓

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.

Prepare

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

Make and bake the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix together the sugar, sweet milk, and melted butter.

  2. Add the cream of tartar and baking soda, then stir in the sifted flour until well combined.

  3. Pour the batter into a greased baking dish.

  4. Bake for 45 minutes or until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve warm with sauce.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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

Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown as it bakes.
Melted butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavour.
Cream of tartar
Acidic ingredient that reacts with baking soda to help the cake rise.
Baking soda
Alkaline leavener that reacts with the acid to produce gas for lift.
Sifted flour
Provides the structure that sets the batter into a cake.

The step that matters

Combining the cream of tartar and baking soda with the batter. The leavening reaction starts as soon as the acid and alkali meet liquid, so the batter should go into the dish and into the oven promptly to trap the gas and rise well.

“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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