Name: Potato Pudding
Ingredients: 10 eggs; 1 pound sugar; ¾ pound butter, creamed; 1 pound potatoes, boiled; ½ cup cream; orange peel or mace for flavor; a small portion of French brandy (optional)

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Potato Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the potatoes and pass them through a sieve while hot.
Cream the butter and mix in part of the sugar.
Beat the eggs and add the remaining sugar.
Combine the eggs with the potatoes.
Add the creamed butter and cream to the mixture.
Flavor with orange peel or mace, and add brandy if desired.

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.

Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Potato + orangetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together537 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,456 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Orange + brandytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,706 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, butter, potato, cream, brandy):

Vanillafits better
Apricotfits better
Figfits better
Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, butter, potato, cream, brandy. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.