Why it works: Orange and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,437 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓
Potato Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare the potatoes
Boil the potatoes.
Peel and crush them until smooth.
Pass the crushed potatoes through a sieve.
Make the batter
Add butter, powdered sugar, egg yolks, orange-flower water, and cinnamon to the potato paste.
Mix thoroughly until the mixture is the consistency of very thick cream.
Stir in the chopped candied peel.
Bake and serve
Pour the mixture into a buttered mold sprinkled with bread crumbs.
Bake at 400°F (200°C) until set.
Turn out onto a dish and serve.
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.
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Orange + cinnamontop 3% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together3,437 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together30,779 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Potato + cinnamontop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,012 recipes
Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
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Potato + orangetop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together537 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Potatoes
- Form the bulk of the pudding, giving it a soft, starchy body once crushed and sieved.
- Egg yolks
- Set during baking to give the pudding its structure and rich, custard-like texture.
- Butter
- Adds fat for richness and a smoother, more tender crumb.
- Powdered sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown lightly in the oven.
The step that matters
Mixing to the right consistency. The batter should be like very thick cream. If it is too stiff or too thin, the pudding may bake unevenly or fail to set properly, since the egg yolks need enough moisture to coagulate smoothly.
Swap the potato
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, egg, orange, cinnamon, bread):
- Sweet potatofits better
- Capsicumfits better
- Asparagusfits about as well
- Potatothe original
Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, orange, cinnamon, bread. 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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