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Dessert

Cottage Pudding

A baked flour and milk pudding topped with a lemon and nutmeg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Cottage Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the cake

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

  2. In a bowl, mix flour, butter, sugar, milk, baking powder, egg, and salt until smooth.

  3. Pour the batter into a greased baking dish and bake for 25 minutes.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, beat together sugar, butter, and egg until creamy.

  2. Place the mixture in a double boiler and heat gently.

  3. Stir in lemon juice and nutmeg.

  4. Pour the sauce from one dish to another a few times before serving.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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
Forms the structure of the cake crumb as it sets in the oven.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps set its structure; the sauce egg thickens it as it heats.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and become light.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness in the cake and richness in the sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the sauce a smooth, creamy body.

The step that matters

Heating the sauce in a double boiler. Gentle indirect heat keeps the egg in the sauce from scrambling and curdling, so it thickens smoothly into a creamy sauce rather than turning grainy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, milk, egg, sauce, nutmeg. 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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