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Dessert

Cottage Pudding

A sweet baked pudding made with butter, sugar, egg, flour, baking soda, milk, and flavored with nutmeg or lemon.

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

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Warm the butter in a bowl.

  2. Stir in the sugar and beaten egg.

  3. Mix the cream of tartar with the flour.

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

  5. Flavor with nutmeg or lemon.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour into a baking dish and bake at 300°F (150°C) for 45 minutes.

  2. Serve with rich, hot 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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  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

Butter
Adds fat for a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Binds the batter and adds structure and richness.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure of the pudding.
Baking soda
Reacts with the cream of tartar to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Cream of tartar
Acid that reacts with the baking soda to help the cake rise.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda in the milk and add to the mixture.. Baking soda must be fully dissolved and mixed in evenly so it reacts with the cream of tartar throughout the batter; uneven pockets can cause patchy rising or a bitter taste.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Jalapenofits less well

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