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Dessert

Cottage Pudding

A baked pudding made with sugar, milk, butter, egg, baking powder, and 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.

Make the batter

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

  2. In a bowl, mix the sugar, milk, melted butter, and egg until well combined.

  3. Add the baking powder and sifted flour, mixing until smooth.

  4. Pour the batter into a greased baking dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for 45 minutes or until golden brown.

  2. Serve 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 + 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

Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the pudding's crumb together as it bakes.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure as it sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, lifting the batter so the pudding rises and becomes light.
Butter
Adds fat that softens the crumb and gives a rich, tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the surface brown as it bakes.
Milk
Provides liquid that hydrates the flour and keeps the crumb moist.

The step that matters

Mixing in the baking powder and flour. Mix only until the batter is smooth. Once flour is hydrated, overmixing develops gluten, which makes the pudding tough and dense instead of tender.

“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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