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Dessert

Cottage Pudding

A sweet baked pudding made with sugar, butter, eggs, milk, flour, and baking powder, topped with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Rub together the sugar and butter.

  2. Add the eggs and beat until light.

  3. Mix in the milk.

  4. Sift the flour and baking powder together, then add to the mixture and beat quickly.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into one large pudding dish or two small ones.

  2. Sprinkle with sugar and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 40 minutes, or 30 minutes if using two dishes.

  3. Serve hot with lemon sauce or any sweet 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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Eggs
Beaten in to add structure and lift, helping the pudding hold its rise and crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, causing the pudding to rise and turn light and open.
Flour
Forms the structure that sets during baking, giving the pudding its body.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the crumb and gives a tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps create a golden, browned top.
Milk
Provides moisture that hydrates the flour and keeps the crumb soft.

The step that matters

Beat the flour in quickly. Once flour is mixed with liquid, gluten begins to form, and over-beating makes the pudding tough. Baking powder also starts reacting as soon as it is wet, so the batter should go into the oven without delay to keep its rise.

“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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