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Dessert

Cottage Pudding

A sweet baked pudding made with butter, sugar, milk, flour, and lemon, served with a butter‑sugar‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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.

Make the batter

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

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

  3. Add the egg and mix well.

  4. In another bowl, combine the milk, baking soda, cream of tartar, and flour.

  5. Gradually add the flour mixture to the butter mixture, stirring until smooth.

  6. Stir in the lemon extract.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a small bread pan and sprinkle a little sugar on top.

  2. Bake for about 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, melt the butter in a saucepan, then stir in the sugar and flour.

  2. Add a little cold water and stir until smooth.

  3. Gradually add the boiling water, stirring constantly, and let it boil for 2-3 minutes.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in the lemon extract.

  5. Serve the pudding warm with the 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. Butter + milktop 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. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Provides the structure that sets the crumb of the pudding and thickens the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender texture to the pudding, and enriches the sauce.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and richness as it sets during baking.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to release gas, helping the pudding rise.
Cream of tartar
Acts as an acid with the baking soda to produce lift and a lighter crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps keep it moist and tender.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling water to the sauce. Stirring the boiling water in gradually and constantly keeps the flour and butter mixture smooth. Dumping it in at once can form lumps that are hard to remove.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, egg, milk, cream, flour, sauce):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, milk, cream, flour, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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