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Dessert

Cottage Pudding

A sweet baked pudding made with pastry flour, baking powder, salt, egg, sugar, melted Cottolene, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. 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 the batter

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

  2. Mix the salt and baking powder with the flour.

  3. Beat the egg until light and fluffy.

  4. Add the sugar and melted Cottolene to the egg, and beat thoroughly.

  5. Stir in the milk, then combine with the flour mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a shallow dish and bake for about 30 minutes.

  2. Cut into squares and serve with lemon or wine 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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Pastry flour
Provides the starch and gluten framework that gives the pudding its structure.
Egg
Adds structure when set by heat and enriches the crumb with moisture and richness.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter to make the cake rise and turn light.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crumb brown lightly as it bakes.
Cottolene
Supplies fat that tenderizes the crumb and keeps it moist.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and dissolves sugar, forming a smooth, pourable batter.

The step that matters

Beating the egg until light and fluffy. Beating incorporates air into the egg, which helps the batter rise and gives a lighter texture. Under-beaten egg leaves a denser pudding.

“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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