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Dessert

Cottage Pudding

A sweet baked batter of sugar, butter, egg, milk, flour, baking soda, and cream of tartar, served with a butter-sugar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. Mix the cream of tartar with the flour.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in the milk.

  4. Rub the butter and sugar together until creamy.

  5. Beat the egg, separating the white and yolk.

  6. Combine all ingredients and mix well.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a shallow pan and bake for 30 minutes.

  2. Cut into squares to serve.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, wet the flour with a little cold water.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the butter and sugar, then add the wet flour.

  3. Pour in the boiling water and boil for 3 minutes, stirring constantly.

  4. Remove from heat and add lemon extract or juice, if desired.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake crumb together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the crumb and helps the sauce feel smooth.
Egg
Adds structure and richness to the batter as it sets in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps brown the crust while tenderizing the crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so it reacts with baking soda to help the cake rise.

The step that matters

Pour in the boiling water and boil for 3 minutes, stirring constantly. Flour thickens only when its starch is heated in liquid while being stirred. Stirring prevents lumps, and the sauce must boil briefly to reach full thickness and a smooth texture.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, egg, milk, cream, flour, sauce):

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

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