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Cottage Pudding
Two tablespoons of butter One-half cup of sugar One egg Three-fourths cup of milk One and one-half cups of flour One-fourth teaspoon of Larkin Table Salt Two teaspoons of Larkin Baking Powder One-half teaspoon of Larkin Vanilla Flavoring Extract Serve with Foamy Pudding-Sauce NOTE. All measurements are made level. A cupful means a level cupful. A spoonful means a level spoonful. (See page 10). Flour is sifted once before being measured.
A plain butter cake with no method, pan or oven given — the book assumed its readers knew what to do with a short list of ingredients. Here is what has to be supplied.
- Method, since none is givenCream the butter and sugar, beat in the egg and vanilla, then add the sifted flour, salt and baking powder alternately with the milk. The result is a soft batter that pours.
- Oven and panNeither is given. A moderate oven, about 350F, and a greased 8-inch square pan for roughly 30 to 35 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean, suits the quantity.
- Level measurementsThe note is not decorative. This book measures everything level and sifts flour before measuring, which gives roughly 4 oz to the cup — about 6 oz of flour in total. Scooping unsifted flour will add an ounce or more and make the cake dry.
- The Larkin brand namesLarkin Table Salt, Baking Powder and Vanilla Flavoring Extract were mail-order house-brand goods sold by the Larkin Company of Buffalo. Any table salt, baking powder and vanilla extract will do.
- Two teaspoons of baking powderThat is on the generous side for 1 1/2 cups of flour by modern standards. With current double-acting powder, 1 1/2 teaspoons is enough.
- The sauce is not optionalCottage pudding is a deliberately plain cake; the sauce is the dish. Foamy pudding-sauce is a whipped butter-sugar-egg sauce from elsewhere in the book. If you skip it, serve the cake warm with something else pourable — hard sauce, lemon sauce, stewed fruit.
- YieldSix to eight servings, cut in squares and served warm from the pan.
Cottage pudding was the American answer to the question of dessert on a weekday: a small plain cake, baked in whatever pan was to hand, cut warm and drowned in sauce. The name distinguished it from the richer boiled and steamed puddings of the same era, and is often said to mark it as belonging to the cottage rather than the great house. Its appearance here, with every ingredient tagged to a brand, tells you what kind of book this is: it appears to have come from the Larkin Company of Buffalo, a soap manufacturer that grew into a vast mail-order business by giving away household premiums to customers who bought its products. Recipe booklets were part of that machinery, and the repeated "Larkin" is advertising copy embedded in the ingredient list.