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Cottage Pudding

A baked pudding made with flour, butter, sugar, eggs, milk, baking soda, cream of tartar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

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

  2. Mix the cream of tartar with the flour.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Combine the butter, sugar, and egg yolks.

  3. Gradually mix in the milk, baking soda, and salt.

  4. Add the flour mixture and gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

  5. The batter should be fairly stiff.

Bake and serve

  1. Butter a mold or dish and pour in the batter.

  2. Bake until golden brown, then serve with any liquid 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.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. 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
Provides the starch structure that sets the crumb as the batter bakes.
Eggs
Whites trap air for lift and structure, while yolks add richness and binding.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to release gas, helping the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter and stabilizes the whipped egg whites.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor in the finished pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps it brown during baking.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Beaten egg whites hold the air that lifts the batter. Stirring them in vigorously knocks out that air, leaving a dense result. Fold gently, just until no white streaks remain.

“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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