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 the batter
Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).
In a large bowl, beat the eggs and sugar together until well combined.
Add the milk and mix thoroughly.
In another bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, and cream of tartar.
Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until smooth.
Fold in the melted butter.
Bake
Pour the batter into a greased dish.
Bake for 1½ to 2 hours until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour and butter 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
- Eggs
- Bind the batter and add structure as they set during baking.
- Flour
- Provides the main structure of the cake once it sets in the oven.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acid in cream of tartar to produce gas that lifts the batter.
- Cream of tartar
- Acts as an acid that activates the baking soda, helping the cake rise.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the batter and contributes to a tender crumb and browning.
- Melted butter
- Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.
The step that matters
Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture. Adding dry ingredients gradually and stirring just until smooth keeps lumps out and limits gluten development, which would otherwise make the cake tough. Overmixing also knocks out the gas produced by the baking soda and cream of tartar.
“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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