Name: Cottage Pudding
Ingredients: 2 cups flour; 1 cup sugar; 1½ cups milk; 2 tablespoons butter; 1 or 2 eggs; 1 teaspoon cream of tartar; 1 teaspoon baking soda; Lemon flavoring

Why it works: Milk and butter 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

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.

Prepare the batter

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
In a bowl, mix the flour, sugar, cream of tartar, and baking soda.
In another bowl, combine the milk, melted butter, and eggs.
Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix well.
Flavor the batter with lemon.

Bake and serve

Pour the batter into a greased baking dish.
Bake for 1 hour or until golden brown.
Serve warm with cream or 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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 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

Flour: Forms the structure of the cake once the batter sets in the oven.
Eggs: Add structure and richness, helping the batter set and hold its shape.
Milk: Adds moisture and helps form a tender crumb.
Butter: Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.
Cream of tartar: Acidifies the batter so it reacts with baking soda to help it rise.
Baking soda: Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that lifts the cake.

Swap the lemon

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

Vanillafits better
Raisinfits better
Coconutfits better
Lemonthe original

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