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Cottage Pudding

A baked flour pudding topped with a lemon butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cottage Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the cake

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix 1 cup sugar, 2 cups flour, ¾ cup cold water, 1 egg, 2 tablespoons butter, 2 teaspoons baking powder, and ¼ teaspoon salt until smooth.

  3. Pour the mixture into a greased baking dish and bake in the hot oven until set.

Make the lemon sauce

  1. For the sauce, mix 1 cup sugar and ⅓ cup butter until well combined.

  2. Stir in 2 cups boiling water and 1 tablespoon cornstarch mixed with the butter and sugar.

  3. Remove from heat and add 1 beaten egg and ½ sliced lemon.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the cake crumb as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and stays light.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor in both the cake and the sauce.
Egg
Adds structure and richness to the cake batter.
Cornstarch
Thickens the sauce as it heats with the water.

The step that matters

Stirring the cornstarch into the boiling sauce. Cornstarch must be fully mixed in and heated to thicken; if it is added to lumps or the sauce is not hot enough, it stays thin or clumps. Adding the beaten egg off the heat avoids scrambling it.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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