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Dessert

Cottage Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, butter, buttermilk, sugar, and leavening agents, served with syrup or jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cottage Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Rub the butter into the flour.

  2. Mix the dry ingredients together.

  3. Make a dough with the buttermilk.

Steam and serve

  1. Grease a pudding basin and half fill it with the dough.

  2. Twist a greased paper over the top.

  3. Steam for 2½ hours.

  4. Serve with syrup or jam.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Flour + buttermilktop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sugar + buttermilktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Cream + buttermilktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together674 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 of the pudding as it steams.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness by coating the flour particles.
Cream of tartar
Reacts with the bicarbonate of soda to help the pudding rise.
Bicarbonate of soda
Produces carbon dioxide with the acid in the buttermilk, lightening the texture.
Buttermilk
Supplies moisture and acidity that activates the leavening.

The step that matters

Twist a greased paper over the top. The paper lets the pudding rise and expand while keeping steam and moisture in, and the grease stops it sticking. Loose or ungreased paper can let the top dry out or cling to the crust.

“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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