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 and mix
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
In a bowl, mix together the sugar, sweet milk, flour, butter, cream of tartar, baking soda (or baking powder), and salt until smooth.
Bake and serve
Pour the batter into a shallow pan.
Bake until golden brown, then cut into squares.
Serve with your choice of sauce.
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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Butter + creamtop 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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Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,873 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
- Flour
- Provides the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acid in the cream of tartar to produce gas that lifts the batter.
- Cream of tartar
- Acidifies the batter so it reacts with the baking soda to help the pudding rise.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the pudding and helps it brown as it bakes.
- Butter
- Adds fat for tenderness and a richer flavour in the crumb.
The step that matters
Bake until golden brown. Baking soda and cream of tartar start rising as soon as they meet liquid, so the batter should go into the oven promptly. Stop baking once golden; overbaking dries the crumb and makes the pudding tough.
Swap the walnut
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, milk, flour, butter, cream):
- Almondfits better
- Pistachiofits better
- Chestnutfits better
- Walnutthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, flour, butter, cream. 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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