Skip to main content
Dessert

Cottage Pudding

A sweet baked batter made with flour, sugar, eggs, butter, milk, and vanilla, served with powdered sugar and lemon or wine sauce.

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

Why it works: Vanilla and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

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

  2. In a bowl, mix the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt.

  3. In another bowl, beat the eggs, then add the sugar, melted butter, and milk.

  4. Stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until combined.

  5. Pour the batter into a shallow dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for about 30-35 minutes or until golden.

  2. Dredge the top with powdered sugar and serve with lemon or wine sauce.

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 + milktop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

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

Vanilla and sugar 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the soft crumb together as the batter sets.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set during baking, giving the pudding its firm structure.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so it reacts with baking soda, helping the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that lifts the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top turn golden as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and rich flavor in the crumb.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

More cottage pudding recipes

Sauce 10Steamed 6Apple 5Strawberry 3 See all 326 →

You might also like

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