Why it works: Wine and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,427 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓
Potato Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the potatoes
Boil the potatoes until tender, then mash and pass through a colander.
Make the batter
In a bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.
Gradually stir in the rose water, wine, brandy, and lemon juice and peel (or mace).
Beat the eggs until light.
Add the beaten eggs gradually to the mixture, alternating with the mashed potatoes.
Bake
Pour the mixture into a buttered dish and bake.
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.
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Wine + brandytop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,427 recipes
Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).
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Potato + lemontop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,230 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,456 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Rose + lemontop 13% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together1,174 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together6,157 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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, moist body to the pudding.
- Butter
- Adds richness and a tender, fat-based texture to the mixture.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the pudding and helps cream the butter into a light base.
- Eggs
- Bind the mixture and help it set into a custard-like structure when baked.
The step that matters
Adding the beaten eggs gradually. Adding eggs slowly, alternating with the potatoes, lets the mixture emulsify smoothly. Adding them all at once can cause curdling or a grainy, separated texture.
Swap the potato
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, rose, wine, brandy, lemon, egg):
- Arrowrootfits better
- Sweet potatofits about as well
- Shallotfits about as well
- Potatothe original
Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, rose, wine, brandy, lemon, egg. 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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