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Dessert

Cottage Puddings

A small sausage-shaped pudding of currants, suet, grated bread, nutmeg, wine or rose water, and egg yolks, fried in butter and served with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cottage Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the puddings

  1. Mix currants, suet, grated bread, nutmeg, white wine or rose water, and beaten egg yolks to form a stiff paste.

  2. With floured hands, roll the mixture into 12 or 13 small sausage-shaped puddings.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the puddings gently in butter until they are nicely browned, rolling them in the frying pan.

  2. Serve with pounded loaf sugar sprinkled over them and a sweet 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Currant + white winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together276 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Bind the mixture into a stiff paste and add richness to the puddings.
Grated bread
Provides bulk and soaks up moisture so the paste holds its shape.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the puddings moist and tender when cooked.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the puddings.

The step that matters

Frying gently until nicely browned. Gentle heat lets the centres cook through while the outside browns slowly. Too much heat would scorch the sugars and fat on the surface before the inside sets.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, nutmeg, white wine, egg, butter, sugar):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, nutmeg, white wine, egg, butter, sugar. 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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