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Cottage Pudding
Mrs. G. S. Whitaker.
One cup of sugar, one cup of sweet milk, one pint of flour, two tablespoons of melted butter, one teaspoon of soda, two teaspoons of cream tartar, one egg.
A plain one-egg cake batter that gets called a pudding because of how it is served: hot, in squares, under a sweet sauce. The original assumes you know the rest, so here are the missing parts.
- The missing methodBeat the egg with the sugar, stir in the melted butter, then add the milk alternately with the flour sifted with the soda and cream of tartar. Mix only until the flour disappears; this is a chemically leavened batter and overbeating toughens it.
- A pint of flourFlour was measured by volume in this book. A pint is 2 cups, roughly 8 1/2 to 9 oz of all-purpose flour. Spoon it into the cup rather than scooping, or the batter will be stiff.
- Soda and cream tartarOne teaspoon of soda with two teaspoons of cream of tartar is the classic homemade baking powder in the correct 1:2 ratio. If you want to substitute, use about 3 to 4 teaspoons of double-acting baking powder and omit both. Either way, get it into the oven promptly, since the acid begins working the moment it meets the milk.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh unsoured milk, as opposed to the buttermilk or clabbered milk also common in these kitchens. Whole milk is the right choice.
- Pan and ovenNo temperature is given; ovens of the period were judged by hand and experience rather than by a dial. Bake in a buttered 8-inch square pan at 350F for 30 to 35 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean and the cake pulls slightly from the sides.
- The sauce is not optionalThe sauce -- Cottage pudding was customarily served with one. A hot lemon sauce, a vanilla-thickened cream sauce, or simply warm stewed fruit is what turns this plain cake into the dish the name promises.
- YieldAn 8-inch square cuts into nine generous or twelve modest squares. Serve it warm; it stales quickly.
Cottage pudding is the American answer to the question of what to do when there is flour, an egg and a cup of milk in the house and company at the door. The name marks it as the humble end of the pudding family: no suet, no long steaming, no fruit, just a quick cake baked in a pan and drowned in sauce, and it turns up often in North American community cookbooks of the later nineteenth century. Its presence here, credited by name to Mrs. G. S. Whitaker, is typical of how these books worked. The recipes were printed much as they were handed in, which is why the method is missing entirely. What the contributor evidently expected the page to supply was the proportions. The soda and cream of tartar are the other period marker, from the decades when commercial baking powder existed but cooks might still combine the two components themselves in the mixing bowl.