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Potato Puddings

A baked or boiled dish of mashed potatoes layered with meat, onion, gravy, or sweetened with butter, eggs, cream, sugar, spices, nuts, and fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Potato Puddings

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 the potatoes

  1. Boil the fine mealy potatoes until tender.

  2. Drain and mash them until very dry.

Make the savory pudding

  1. For a savory pudding, mix the mashed potatoes with a little milk, coarse sea salt, and black pepper.

  2. Grease a baking dish.

  3. Layer the mashed potatoes.

  4. Layer a seasoned meat, chopped onion, and a little gravy.

  5. Repeat the layers, finishing with a layer of mashed potatoes on top.

  6. Cover with buttered paper to prevent scorching.

  7. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1.5 to 2 hours.

Make the sweet pudding

  1. For a sweet pudding, rub the potato meal through a colander.

  2. Mix with butter, eggs, cream, loaf sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, almonds, candied citron, and optional currants.

  3. Bake until golden brown.

  4. Or boil in a buttered mold.

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 + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  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

Fine mealy potatoes
Their starch becomes fluffy when mashed dry, giving the pudding its body.
Eggs
Set during baking and bind the mixture into a custard-like structure.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, softening the texture of the sweet pudding.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the top brown and the crumb stay tender.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the pudding and contributes to browning on the surface.
Meat
Provides savory flavor and moisture between the potato layers.

The step that matters

Cover with buttered paper to prevent scorching. Covering shields the top from direct heat, so the pudding can cook through without the surface burning before the interior sets.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, milk, pepper, butter, egg, meat, onion):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, milk, pepper, butter, egg, meat, onion. 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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