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Dessert

Potatoe Pudding

A sweet dish of boiled potatoes mixed with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, wine, milk, and spices, then boiled or baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Potatoe Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Boil the potatoes until thoroughly cooked, then peel and mash them.

  2. Mix the mashed potatoes with melted butter, powdered sugar, and eggs, beating well.

  3. Add flour and white wine, then stir to combine.

  4. Tie the mixture in a buttered cloth and boil for 30 minutes.

Make the baked custard and bake

  1. Mix cold mashed potatoes with beaten eggs, moist sugar, nutmeg, and milk, adding lemon peel if desired.

  2. Bake the second mixture until set.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide the starchy bulk that gives the pudding its body and soft texture.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set it into a firm, sliceable texture when cooked.
Melted butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender mouthfeel to the mixture.
Flour
Adds structure, helping the mixture hold together after boiling or baking.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the second mixture as it sets.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps browning during baking.

The step that matters

Tie the mixture in a buttered cloth and boil for 30 minutes. The cloth must be tightly tied and buttered so the pudding releases cleanly and keeps its shape. Boiling must stay gently and steadily going, because a hard or uneven boil can break the mixture apart or make it dense.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Sweet potatofits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, flour, white wine, milk, 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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