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Dessert

Cottage Pudding

A baked custard-like pudding made with water, milk, eggs, butter, sugar, and baking powder, served with a sweetened egg-milk sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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.

Make the batter

  1. Combine water, sweet milk, beaten egg, melted butter, powdered sugar, and baking powder in a bowl.

  2. Mix until smooth and pour into a greased baking dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden and set.

  2. Whisk together the yolks of 3 eggs and 1 pint of milk for the sauce.

  3. Sweeten and flavor the sauce to taste, then serve over the pudding.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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 sauce, helping it set and thicken.
Melted butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps brown the crust.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the pudding rises and becomes light.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness to the batter and the custard sauce.

The step that matters

Bake until golden and set. Underbaking leaves the batter wet and collapsed, while overbaking dries the crumb. The egg proteins set as the pudding heats, so checking for a firm center and golden top prevents both problems.

“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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