Cottage Pudding with Vanilla Sauce

I stumbled upon this 1920s restaurant menu on the Bexley Public Library’s website. For my Columbus people, the Willard originally shared a space with Wentz Pharmacy in the building that now houses Graeter’s Ice Cream. This “New Willard” opened at the northwest corner of Drexel and Main, where Giuseppe’s now operates. This particular location was short-lived. In 1934 the restaurant would move further west to 2143 E. Main St.,  where it remained until closing in 1988.

Anyhow, I was intrigued to see that several of the dishes on this menu were served with a side of Cottage Pudding with Vanilla Sauce, a dish I was unfamiliar with. It’s a traditional American dessert recipe that’s been spotted in cookbooks dating back to the 1800s. It’s a pudding in the British sense of the term—a cake that’s soaked in a sauce to give it a pudding-like texture. It’s a simple dessert made with modest ingredients, perfect for cottage-dwellers back in the day.

A little Googling and I was able to find a newspaper clipping recipe for Cottage Pudding with Vanilla Sauce, so I tried it at home.

As you can see, it’s a fairly standard white cake that you proceed to smother in a vanilla sauce. I’ve seen Cottage Pudding described as a “snack cake,” which I can dig. My favorite way to eat this was at about 3 p.m., heated up and mashed up in a coffee mug as a sweet afternoon pick-me-up.