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Cottage Pudding (III)
Mrs. D. McCraney.
Two cups of flour, one of sugar, one and a half cups of milk, two tablespoons butter, one or two eggs, one teaspoonful of cream of tartar and soda. Flavour with lemon; bake one hour in a moderate oven; serve with cream or sauce.
A plain butter cake baked in a dish and eaten warm with sauce — the recipe assumes you know the proportions of a nineteenth-century cup and the habits of a wood range. Two things need attention: the leavening, which is written ambiguously, and the hour in the oven.
- The leavening is ambiguous"One teaspoonful of cream of tartar and soda" can be read as a teaspoon of each or a teaspoon of the two combined, and period books use both phrasings. The standard ratio is two parts cream of tartar to one part soda; a teaspoon of cream of tartar with half a teaspoon of soda is the conventional reading, and it is roughly equivalent to two teaspoons of modern baking powder for two cups of flour.
- Moderate ovenAbout 350°F; period 'moderate' covers roughly 325 to 375°F. Anything hotter will set the crust before the centre of a batter this wet has risen.
- One hour is for a deep dishAn hour at 350°F suits a deep pudding dish or loaf pan. Baked in an 8-inch square or a 9-inch round it will be done in 35 to 40 minutes, when a skewer comes out clean and the edges pull from the sides.
- FlourNineteenth-century household flour differed from modern all-purpose in strength and consistency of milling. The batter should pour thickly rather than drop; add a spoonful or two more milk if it seems stiff.
- Two tablespoons of butter is deliberateThis is a lean cake by design — the richness comes from the sauce, not the crumb. Cream the butter with the sugar anyway, then beat in the eggs, and alternate flour and milk. Do not be tempted to double the butter or you change the pudding into a cake.
- Flavour with lemonThis may mean lemon extract, a few drops, or the grated rind of a lemon. Rind gives a better flavour; extract was the more usual bottled flavouring of the period.
- Cream or sauce'sauce' here is the standard boiled pudding sauce of the period -- butter, sugar, boiling water and a little flour or cornstarch, flavoured with lemon or nutmeg -- or a hard sauce of creamed butter and sugar. Plain cream poured over is the simplest option, and the recipe offers it first.
- YieldServes six to eight. It is best warm, within an hour or two of baking; it stales quickly because of the low fat.
Cottage pudding is the American name for the plainest possible baked pudding: a simple butter cake, baked in a dish rather than a tin, and made into a pudding by whatever sauce is poured over it. The name is generally taken to signal economy and modesty rather than any particular cottage hat came us cottage cheese and cottage loaf. It appears three times in The Home Cook Book (1877), each version from a different contributor, which is exactly how that book was assembled: Toronto women sent in the recipes they actually used, and the compilers printed them all rather than choosing between them. The cream of tartar and soda are typical of the period: commercial baking powder was available by the 1870s, but many cooks still bought the two components separately and combined them in the bowl.