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Dessert

Birdie’s Cottage Pudding

A baked pudding made from buttermilk, sugar, lard, baking soda, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Buttermilk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,721 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Birdie’s 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.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine buttermilk, white sugar, and lard.

  2. Add baking soda and mix well.

  3. Gradually add flour until the batter is thick like stirred cake.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking dish.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.

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. Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Buttermilk + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Buttermilk
Provides moisture and tang, and its acid reacts with the baking soda to lift the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in buttermilk to release gas, helping the cake rise and turn light.
Flour
Builds the structure that holds the pudding's crumb together as it bakes.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crumb brown and stay tender.
Lard
Adds fat that shortens gluten strands, giving a tender, moist crumb.

The step that matters

Add the flour gradually until the batter is thick. Flour develops gluten when mixed, so stopping once the batter is thick keeps the crumb tender rather than tough. Baking soda starts reacting with the buttermilk as soon as they meet, so the batter should go into the dish and oven without delay.

“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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