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Potato Pudding

A baked dish of mashed potatoes mixed with butter, eggs, and sugar, topped with a pastry border and stiffened egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,456 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Potato Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Rub the boiled potatoes through a sieve.

  2. Mix the potatoes with the butter until well combined.

  3. Add the egg yolks and sugar, and mix thoroughly.

  4. Make a plain pastry border and place it in a baking dish.

Bake

  1. Fill the dish with the potato mixture.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff and spread them on top.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for one hour.

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. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Potato + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,978 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Boiled potatoes
Provide the bulk and soft, smooth body of the pudding.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender, moist texture.
Egg yolks
Enrich the mixture and help it set when baked.
Egg whites
Beaten until stiff, they create a light topping that puffs and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff. Egg whites must be beaten to firm peaks so they trap air and hold their shape. Under-beaten whites will deflate and make the topping flat and dense rather than light.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, sugar. 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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