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Dessert

Irish Potato Pudding

A baked sweet pudding made from mashed potatoes, sugar, butter, eggs, nutmeg, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Irish Potato Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil and mash the potatoes until smooth.

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Beat in the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  3. Add the mashed potatoes, grated nutmeg, lemon rind, and lemon juice. Mix until all ingredients are well combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased baking dish.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until set and golden on top.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Potato + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide the bulk and a soft, dense body to the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, creamed with butter, helps give a light texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, which carries flavor and softens the crumb.
Eggs
Set the pudding as they cook, giving it structure and a custard-like firmness.
Lemons
Their rind adds aroma and their juice adds acidity that brightens the sweetness.

The step that matters

Beat in the eggs one at a time. Adding eggs gradually and mixing well after each lets the emulsion stay stable, so the batter does not curdle or separate and the final texture stays smooth.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, egg, nutmeg, lemon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, nutmeg, lemon. 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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