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Dessert

Cottage Pudding

A baked apple dessert with meringue topping and whiskey sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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

Ingredients

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 the apples

  1. In a skillet, combine the quartered apples, sugar, and water.

  2. Cook until it forms a thick jelly, keeping the apples whole.

  3. Set aside to cool.

Make the cake

  1. Beat together the butter and sugar.

  2. Add the beaten eggs, milk, flour, and baking powder. Mix well.

  3. Pour the batter into a funnel cake tin.

  4. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for one hour.

Assemble and top

  1. Turn the pudding out onto a round plate.

  2. Fill the center with the cooked apples.

  3. Coat with meringue.

  4. Beat the egg whites until stiff. Gradually add the sugar. Beat until well combined.

  5. Bake the meringue in the oven until it turns a delicate brown.

Make the sauce

  1. Mix cornstarch, sugar, butter, and nutmeg in a skillet with a little cold water. Place the skillet on the stove.

  2. Pour in the boiling water while stirring continuously.

  3. Boil until thick.

  4. Remove from heat. Stir in the beaten egg yolks and whiskey.

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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and enrich the cake's structure and texture.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as it sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and turns light.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that sets and browns as the meringue topping.
Cornstarch
Thickens the sauce as it boils, giving it body.

The step that matters

Boil the sauce until thick. Cornstarch only thickens fully when it reaches a boil while being stirred, so stirring constantly prevents lumps and stopping too early leaves the sauce thin.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Applethe original

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