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Dessert

Cottage Pudding

A steamed pudding made with eggs, sugar, flour, milk, butter, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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

Make the batter

  1. In a mixing bowl, beat the eggs and sugar together until well combined.

  2. Add the flour, sweet milk, melted butter, and baking powder. Mix until smooth.

  3. Pour the batter into a greased steaming dish.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam for 30 minutes until cooked through.

  2. Serve with cream or lemon 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as the pudding sets.
All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the pudding as the starch sets with heat.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the pudding rises and turns light and tender.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and adds tenderness to the crumb.

The step that matters

Steam until cooked through. Steam is gentle and even, so the pudding cooks through without drying. Lifting the lid too often lets steam escape and can cause the pudding to sink or cook unevenly, so the steamer should be kept sealed and steadily simmering throughout the 30 minutes.

“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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