Name: Cottage Pudding
Ingredients: 1 cup sweet milk; 2 cups flour; 1 teaspoon cream of tartar; ½ teaspoon baking soda

Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cottage Pudding

Ingredients

1 cup sweet milk
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
½ teaspoon baking soda

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

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
In a bowl, mix the sweet milk, flour, cream of tartar, and baking soda until smooth.
Pour the batter into a greased baking dish.

Bake and serve

Bake for 1 hour.
Serve warm with 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.

Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together29,399 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together30,481 recipes

Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 and gluten-forming protein that give the pudding its structure.
Sweet milk: Supplies the liquid that hydrates the flour and gives the batter its moisture.
Cream of tartar: Acts as an acid that reacts with baking soda to release gas and lighten the batter.
Baking soda: Alkaline leavener that, with the acid, makes the pudding rise in the oven.

“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.