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Boiled Potato Pudding

A baked pudding made from mashed boiled potatoes, butter, milk, eggs, and flour, served with sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Boiled Potato Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Boil the potatoes and mash them very fine.

  2. While warm, add the butter and milk.

  3. Beat the eggs until light and pour them into the mixture.

  4. Add enough flour to make a very stiff batter.

Boil and serve

  1. Flour the inside of a pudding bag and pour in the batter, which should be as stiff as soft dough.

  2. Tie the bag tightly, leaving 2-3 inches at the top for the pudding to swell.

  3. Boil for 2 hours.

  4. Dip the bag briefly in cold water, then turn out the pudding.

  5. Serve with your preferred sauce.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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
Provide the starchy bulk that gives the pudding its body after mashing.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing softness and flavour to the pudding.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps the mashed mixture become a smooth, pourable batter.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set during boiling to give the pudding structure.
Flour
Thickens the batter so it holds its shape as a stiff dough.

The step that matters

Tie the bag tightly, leaving room at the top. The pudding swells as it cooks, so a tight seal keeps water out and the batter together, while the open space at the top gives room to expand without bursting the bag.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Chivefits about as well
  2. Potatothe original
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, egg, flour. 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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