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Potato-Crust for Boiled Fruit Puddings

A potato-based crust used to encase fruit fillings in boiled puddings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Potato-Crust for Boiled Fruit Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crust

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender, then mash them finely.

  2. In a bowl, combine the mashed potatoes and flour, mixing well with a chopping knife.

  3. Chop in the butter and salt, then mix to a paste with very cold water.

  4. Gather the dough into a round heap on a floured surface and roll it into a round shape, about 1 inch thick in the center and thinner at the edges.

Wrap and boil

  1. Prepare a thick pudding cloth by scalding and wringing it out, then dust it evenly with flour.

  2. Place the rolled crust in the center of the cloth, add your fruit filling, and fold the edges of the crust over the fruit.

  3. Gather the cloth around the pudding and tie it tightly with string, leaving space for the pudding to rise.

  4. Boil the pudding, then lift it onto a large dish, allowing the cloth ends to fall over the edge.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Mashed into the flour, they add moisture and a tender, soft texture to the crust.
All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the dough, binding it into a paste that holds its shape.
Solid butter
Chopped in cold, it creates fat pockets that make the crust tender and flaky.
Salt
Seasons the dough and balances its flavor.

The step that matters

Mixing in very cold water. Cold water keeps the butter firm and in small pieces, so the dough stays tender rather than becoming tough and sticky. Overworking it also develops gluten, making the crust tough.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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