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Dessert

Sweet or Irish Potato Pudding

A baked pudding made from mashed potatoes, butter, sugar, eggs, cream, brandy, lemon rind, nutmeg, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg 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 ↓

Sweet or Irish Potato Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, beat the butter and sugar until creamy.

  3. Add the beaten eggs and mix well.

Make the filling

  1. Stir in the cream, lemon rind, brandy, mashed potatoes, nutmeg, and cinnamon, then mix everything together thoroughly.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered pudding dish or a rich pie crust.

  2. Bake until firm.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with the sugar to add richness and a tender, fine-textured crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the butter cream into a light base.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set into a firm, custard-like structure as it bakes.
Mashed potatoes
Add body and moisture, giving the pudding its dense, soft texture.
Cream
Adds fat and moisture, making the filling richer and more tender.

The step that matters

Bake until firm. Eggs set as their proteins coagulate with heat. Underbaking leaves the centre loose, while overbaking can make the pudding dry and grainy, so check for a firm set rather than relying on time alone.

Swap the potato

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

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

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