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Dessert

Cottage Pudding

A baked pudding made with flour, butter, sugar, egg, milk, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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. 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).

Make the batter

  1. In a mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the egg and mix well.

  3. Stir in the milk.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour and baking powder.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until just combined.

  6. Pour the batter into a round tin or dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for about 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

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

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 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. Flour + sugartop 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).

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

All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and structure that set the crumb of the pudding.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps brown the surface as it bakes.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and moisture as it sets.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and hydrates the flour to form the batter.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, lifting it so the pudding rises and becomes light.

The step that matters

Stirring the dry ingredients into the wet mixture. Stir only until just combined. Overmixing develops gluten in the flour, which makes the pudding tough and dense instead of 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.

More cottage pudding recipes

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

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