These things happen! Was it a simple case of an error in labelling or misidentification?
“The rose thought to be Auguste Comte” over here can sometimes look so much like ‘Maman Cochet’. At other times, the differences are very marked.
(In Oz it's been found in a number of places and has the study names "Not Mme Hoste", "Hay Valley Red Tea", "Nantawarra Pink" and there are probably more. Now that we know it better, we are recognising it in more and more places. It seems to be one of the more common surviving roses in cemeteries and the sites of old gardens.) It makes sense that the two roses should be similar – both roses are the result of ‘Marie van Houtte’ x ‘Mme Lambard’.

If I list the similarities and differences noticed in my garden will you check whether they match what you have seen in your plants?

Pedicel – ‘Maman Cochet’ has a basically smooth pedicel - the undercarriage of the bloom has a clean, smooth appearance. "The rose thought to be Auguste Comte" can have a smooth pedicel but it is more often glandular - sometimes very glandular.

Bloom colour - both roses range in colour and at times they are hard to tell apart, but when "?Auguste Comte" produces the darker coloured blooms with striking, intense carmine-red on the outer petals and the petal edges, they are not like anything seen on ‘Maman Cochet’. (At the moment, our plants are producing very dark flowers – from a distance they look dark carmine – I cannot see any cream).

Foliage – Tea foliage can vary so much depending on climate, season and conditions and one always has to be careful saying anything is 'typical' but...... ‘Maman Cochet’ often has leaves that look 'quilted' because of the impressed veins and "?Auguste Comte" tends to have darker leaves with less impressed veins, often a denser appearance and a more pronounced point to the leaflet.

At certain times of the year "?Auguste Comte" will appear to set hips - some of them quite large - but if they are cut open, to date there have been no seeds - they are like the 'hips' formed by ‘Rosette Delizy’ - just full of fibrous material. I haven't seen these 'hips' forming on ‘Maman Cochet’.

One of the photos of “Bryan Freidel Pink Tea” on HMF shows a bud with a fresh green square-based receptacle and this is one of the things so often (but not always! – sometimes they have rounded bases) seen on ‘Maman Cochet’. (Noelene Drage says it reminds her of a ‘saucepan on a stick’ – an association that sticks in my mind.)

Do these obs. mirror what you have found?

I hope it can be sorted out and that the correct 'Maman Cochet' will find its way into mainstream commerce over there. It is such a beautiful rose and incredibly hard working in hot climates.
It’s not easy deciding what’s what, especially when plants are young and capricious. “Nantawarra Pink” came to us as a matchstick with roots and as it slowly grew I thought it was ‘Maman Cochet’ and we were going to change the study name to “Nantawarra Cochet”. Then it grew some more and we realised that it was doing things that ‘Maman Cochet’ didn’t do and that it was in fact the same as “Not Mme Hoste” and was probably ‘Auguste Comte’.
All good fun.

Do you grow the climbing form of 'White Maman Cochet'? Once established it is one of the most beautiful roses I know.