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Cottage Pudding
One cup sugar, half cup butter, one egg, cup sweet milk, tea spoon soda dissolved in milk, two tea-spoons cream tartar in the flour, three cups flour, half tea-spoon extract of lemon. Sprinkle a little sugar over the top just before putting in the oven, bake in a small bread-pan, and when done cut in squares, and serve with sauce made of two table-spoons butter, cup sugar, table-spoon flour wet with a little cold water and stirred until like cream; add a pint boiling water, let boil two or three minutes, stirring all the time. After taking from the fire, add half tea-spoon extract of lemon. Nutmeg may be used in place of lemon. What is left of the pudding and sauce may be served cold for tea. -Mrs. Howard Vosbury.
A plain butter cake baked in a loaf pan and cut into squares under a hot lemon sauce. Nothing here is difficult; the two things worth attention are the homemade leavening and the stiffness of the batter.
- Soda and cream of tartarOne teaspoon soda with two teaspoons cream of tartar is the classic 1:2 ratio that predates commercial baking powder. Substituting 3 to 4 teaspoons of baking powder for the pair works, but keep the original method if you use it: the soda goes into the milk, the cream of tartar is sifted through the flour, and the batter goes into the pan promptly since the reaction begins on contact.
- Sweet milkPlain fresh milk, as distinct from the sour milk or buttermilk called for in other recipes of the period. Whole milk is closest to what she had.
- OvenNo temperature is given because the stove had no dial. Bake at 350F, 35 to 45 minutes in a loaf pan, until a skewer comes out clean.
- A small bread-panRoughly an 8x4 or 9x5 inch loaf pan. A greased 8-inch square pan gives a shallower cake that bakes in about 30 minutes and cuts into neater squares.
- Batter consistencyThree cups of flour to one cup of milk and one egg produces a thick, almost spoonable batter rather than a pourable one. That is correct for this style of pudding cake. Spread it level in the pan with a spatula.
- Extract of lemonLemon extract, not juice or zest, and it was strong stuff. A half teaspoon is right; if you are using lemon zest instead, allow the grated peel of one lemon.
- The sauceA flour-thickened sauce, not cornstarch, so it must actually boil for the two to three minutes stated or it tastes pasty. Whisk the flour smooth with cold water first, then add the boiling water in a thin stream while stirring. It thickens to a light pouring consistency, and the extract goes in off the heat so the flavor is not driven off. Makes about two cups.
- YieldRoughly a dozen squares, depending on how they are cut. The note about serving the remainder cold at tea is practical advice: the cake keeps a couple of days, and the sauce reheats with a splash of water.
Cottage pudding is the American answer to the problem of what to do about dessert on an ordinary weeknight: a plain cake, baked in whatever pan was to hand, made into a pudding by the sauce poured over it. The name carries the same suggestion of modest domesticity as cottage cheese or cottage pie, and by the 1880s it was common in American general cookbooks. Its appearance credited to a contributor rather than an author reflects how the book was assembled: recipes gathered from named housekeepers. The reliance on soda plus cream of tartar rather than a tin of baking powder is consistent with a period in which commercial baking powders were sold but the older two-jar method was still in use.