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
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.
Prepare the batter
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
In a bowl, mix together the sugar, milk, and butter until well combined.
Add the eggs, flour, cream of tartar, and baking soda, and mix until smooth.
Bake
Pour the batter into a greased baking dish and bake until golden brown.
While the pudding is baking, beat the reserved egg whites until stiff peaks form.
Make and apply the frosting
Gradually add 1 cup of sugar to the egg whites, continuing to beat until glossy.
Frost the pudding immediately after it comes out of the oven.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter and flour 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
- Eggs
- Set the structure and add moisture and richness to the crumb.
- Flour
- Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together as it bakes.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acid in the batter to release gas that lifts the pudding.
- Cream of tartar
- Supplies acidity that reacts with the baking soda to help the batter rise.
- Butter
- Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and carries flavour.
- Milk
- Adds moisture and helps hydrate the flour into a smooth batter.
The step that matters
Adding sugar to the egg whites gradually. Adding sugar slowly while beating stabilises the foam, so the whites reach stiff, glossy peaks that hold their shape on the hot pudding. Adding it all at once or too early can leave the foam weak or grainy.
“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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