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Cottage Pudding
1 cupful sugar, 1 cupful milk, 1 egg, lump butter size of egg, 1 pint flour, salt, 1 heaping teaspoonful baking-powder.
Sauce.--1 cupful sugar, 1 egg, 1 teaspoonful flour, small piece of butter, mixed. Add boiling water, let come to boil, flavor with extract vanilla.
A plain one-egg butter cake baked and served warm under a hot sauce. The original assumes the cook knows the creaming method and the oven, so both need filling in.
- Method, unstatedCream the butter and sugar, beat in the egg, then add the flour sifted with salt and baking powder alternately with the milk. The batter is soft, closer to a thick pouring batter than a stiff dough.
- Oven and panThe recipe gives no oven direction. A greased 8-inch square pan or 9-inch round at 350F for 30 to 35 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean, suits a batter of this size.
- A pint of flourFlour was measured by volume: 1 pint is 2 cups, about 9 oz. Spoon it into the cup rather than scooping, or the cake turns dry and tight.
- Butter the size of an eggPeriod sources put this anywhere from about 2 tablespoons to 1/4 cup (roughly 1 to 2 oz), the larger figure being the more common reckoning. At the lower end the crumb is leaner, which suits a pudding meant to be sauced.
- Baking powderA heaping teaspoonful measures out to roughly 2 level teaspoons, which is a normal proportion for 2 cups of flour. Do not add more.
- The sauceBeat the sugar, egg, flour and butter smooth, then whisk in boiling water in a thin stream -- the recipe gives no quantity; about a cup makes a pouring sauce -- and bring the whole to a boil, stirring. Adding the water slowly matters; tipped in at once, the egg can scramble.
- Vanilla lastFlavor off the heat, after boiling, as the recipe directs; extract added to a boiling pan loses some of its aroma.
- Yield and servingServes six to eight. Cut warm from the pan and pour the hot sauce over each portion; the cake is deliberately plain and dries out by the next day.