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Dessert

Cottage Pudding

A baked pudding made from butter, sugar, flour, eggs, milk, baking powder, salt, spices, and optional fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

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).

  2. In a bowl, cream the butter and sugar together.

Make the batter

  1. Add the eggs and mix well.

  2. In another bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, salt, and spices.

  3. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture, alternating with the milk.

  4. If desired, fold in fruit.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a covered pudding pan.

  2. Place the pudding pan in a large pan of boiling water.

  3. Bake for about 1 hour or until a toothpick comes out clean.

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. Flour + milktop 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. Flour + eggtop 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

Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and carries flavor through the batter.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and, creamed with butter, helps give a light crumb.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together as it sets.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and help bind the batter as it bakes.
Milk
Supplies moisture that hydrates the flour and keeps the crumb soft.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter to lift the pudding as it bakes.

The step that matters

Alternating dry ingredients with milk. Stirring the flour mixture in gently and only until combined keeps gluten development low. Overmixing toughens the crumb, making the pudding dense rather than 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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