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Dessert

Steamed Cottage Pudding

A steamed pudding made with butter, sugar, egg, baking powder, milk or water, flour, jam, and served with rich cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the egg and mix well.

  3. Stir in the baking powder and milk or water.

  4. Gradually add flour until you achieve a stiff batter.

Steam and serve

  1. Place the jam in a pudding dish.

  2. Pour the batter over the jam.

  3. Steam for 1¼ hours.

  4. Turn out the pudding so the jam is on top.

  5. Serve with rich cream.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Egg
Binds the batter and adds richness and structure as it sets.
Baking powder
Releases gas that makes the pudding rise and turn light.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavour.
Flour
Forms the structure of the pudding as the batter sets.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps brown and soften the crumb.
Jam
Becomes a sweet, moist layer on top when the pudding is turned out.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour until the batter is stiff. Adding flour gradually lets you judge the batter's texture. Too much flour makes the pudding dense and dry, while too little leaves it loose and likely to collapse.

“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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