Skip to main content
Dessert

Cottage Pudding with Fruit

A baked pudding made with butter, sugar, milk, egg, flour, baking powder, vanilla, lemon juice, and fruit, topped with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Vanilla and banana are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,430 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Cottage Pudding with Fruit

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter in a mixing bowl.

  2. Gradually add the sugar while stirring constantly.

  3. Add the lightly beaten egg and mix well.

  4. Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt.

  5. Add the dry ingredients alternately with the milk to the butter mixture.

  6. Stir in the lemon juice and vanilla extract.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into buttered gem cups or a shallow buttered and floured pan.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 25 minutes.

  3. If using a shallow pan, cut the pudding into squares after baking.

  4. Top with sliced fruit and sprinkle with sugar.

  5. Finish with a generous layer of whipped cream.

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. Vanilla + bananatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Milk + bananatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,470 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
Creaming with sugar traps air and gives the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and richness as it sets.
Flour
Forms the structure of the pudding as the batter sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the pudding rises and becomes light.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter so it bakes evenly.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps it brown at the edges.

The step that matters

Adding the dry ingredients alternately with the milk. Adding flour and liquid in portions keeps the batter smooth and prevents overworking, which would make the pudding tough. Mixing too fast can leave lumps or a dense texture.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, milk, egg, flour, vanilla, banana. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes