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Dessert

Cottage Pudding

A sweet lemon pudding baked with a fluffy lemon sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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.

Prepare

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

Make the pudding

  1. In a bowl, mix together the sugar, egg yolks, sweet milk, melted butter, baking powder, flour, and grated lemon rind until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased baking dish and bake for 30 minutes.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, beat the egg whites until stiff, then gradually add 1 cup of sugar and the lemon juice, mixing until smooth.

  2. Serve the pudding warm with the lemon sauce on top.

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. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 main structure that holds the pudding together as it bakes.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter while setting the crumb.
Egg whites
Beaten until stiff to give the sauce a light, airy texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the pudding rises and becomes light.
Melted butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavor in the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and the sauce, and helps browning during baking.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites until stiff. Egg whites must be beaten to stiff peaks to trap air, giving the sauce a light, airy texture. Under-beaten whites stay runny, and sugar added too early can deflate them.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, milk, butter, 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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