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Dessert

A Potatoe Pudding

A simple potato pudding made with boiled potatoes, butter, wine or orange juice, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and white wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,083 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

A Potatoe Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender.

  2. Mash the potatoes in a mortar until fine.

Make the pudding

  1. Mix in the melted butter.

  2. Pour the white wine or orange juice over the mixture.

  3. Sprinkle sugar over the pudding and the dish.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  3. Potato + white winetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together533 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Potato + sugartop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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 mashed fine.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the mashed potato a smooth, silky texture.
White wine or seville orange juice
Adds acidity and bright flavour that balances the richness and sugar.
Sugar
Adds sweetness on top of the pudding and in the dish.

The step that matters

Mash the potatoes until fine. Potatoes must be mashed smooth while still hot so starch granules break down evenly. Lumps left behind stay grainy, and cooling makes the mash stiff and harder to blend with the butter.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, white wine, 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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