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Dessert

Cottage Pudding

A sweet baked pudding made with sugar, butter, egg, milk, flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, and lemon extract, served with a butter‑sugar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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.

Make the batter

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the egg and sweet milk, mixing well.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in the milk and add to the mixture.

  5. In a separate bowl, combine the flour and cream of tartar, then add to the wet ingredients.

  6. Stir in the lemon extract.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a small bread pan and sprinkle a little sugar on top.

  2. Bake until done, then cut into squares.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, melt 2 tablespoons of butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in 1 cup of sugar and 1 tablespoon of flour mixed with a little cold water until smooth.

  3. Add 1 pint of boiling water and let it boil for 2-3 minutes, stirring constantly.

  4. Remove from heat and add ½ teaspoon of lemon extract or nutmeg.

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-like crumb together as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the cream of tartar and liquid to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Cream of tartar
Acidic partner to baking soda, releasing carbon dioxide for a light rise.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the crumb and the sauce.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and moisture to the crumb.

The step that matters

Bake until done. Baking soda and cream of tartar release gas quickly once mixed, so the batter should go into the oven promptly. Underbaking leaves a gummy centre, while overbaking dries the crumb.

Swap the lemon

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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