Name: An Excellent Potato Pudding
Ingredients: 8 ounces boiled potatoes; 2 ounces butter; 2 eggs (yolks and whites); ½ cup cream; 1 tablespoon white wine; a little salt; juice and rind of 1 lemon; sugar to taste

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 ↓

An Excellent Potato Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Mash the boiled potatoes in a bowl.
Add the butter, eggs, cream, white wine, salt, lemon juice, and lemon rind.
Beat the mixture until frothy.
Add sugar to taste and mix well.

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).
Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,083 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,832 recipes

Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).
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

Swap the potato

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

Leekfits better
Asparagusfits better
Shallotfits about as well
Potatothe original

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