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Dessert

Steamed Cottage Pudding

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

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

Steamed Cottage Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix melted butter, milk, sugar, and egg until well combined.

  2. Add baking powder and flour, stirring until smooth.

Steam

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Steam for 1 hour until set.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 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).

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
Forms the structure that sets the pudding into a firm, tender crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the pudding rise and turn light.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps it set firm as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender texture to the crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the crumb a soft texture.

The step that matters

Steam for 1 hour until set. Steam keeps the pudding moist while the egg and flour proteins set. Lifting the lid or letting the water boil dry can cause uneven setting or a dry, dense pudding.

“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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