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Dessert

Cottage Pudding

A sweet baked pudding made with sugar, butter, eggs, milk, flour, baking powder, and nutmeg or lemon extract, served with a butter‑sugar‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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.

Make the cake batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the beaten eggs and sweet milk, mixing well.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour and baking powder, then add to the wet mixture.

  5. Flavor with nutmeg or lemon extract, then pour into a square pan.

Bake and make the sauce

  1. Bake until done, then cut into squares.

  2. For the sauce, melt 2 tablespoons of butter in a saucepan.

  3. Stir in 1 cup of sugar and 1 tablespoon of flour, adding a little cold water to create a smooth mixture.

  4. Gradually add 1 pint of boiling water, stirring constantly.

  5. Let it boil for 2-3 minutes, then flavor with nutmeg or lemon extract.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  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

Eggs
Provide structure and lift to the cake as they set in the batter.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure once mixed with liquid and baked.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and stays light.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown at the edges.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling water to the sauce. Pouring the water in gradually while stirring constantly keeps the flour and sugar from clumping, so the sauce turns smooth rather than lumpy.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Jalapenofits less well

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