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Dessert

Potatoe or Carrot Pudding

A baked pudding made with boiled potatoes or carrots, almonds, orange‑flower water, eggs, butter, and brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,115 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Potatoe or Carrot 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

  1. Pound the boiled potatoes or carrots in a mortar.

  2. Blanch and pound the almonds with a little orange-flower water.

  3. Mix in the egg whites, egg yolks, salt, nutmeg, and brown sugar.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a dish with poultry paste.

  2. Stir in the melted butter just before baking.

  3. Bake for 20 minutes at 400°F (200°C).

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. Almond + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  4. Orange + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

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

  5. Potato + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together337 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Boiled potatoes or carrots
Provide the starchy base that gives the pudding its body and soft, moist crumb.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help the mixture set into a custard-like texture when baked.
Egg whites
Add structure and lightness, helping the pudding rise and hold its shape.
Sweet almonds
Contribute nutty flavour and fat, adding richness and a smooth, fine texture.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture, folded in just before baking.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a caramel note, and helps the pudding brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Stir in the melted butter just before baking. Melted butter added too early can cool, firm up or separate in the mixture. Adding it last keeps the batter smooth and evenly textured, so the fat disperses well through the eggs and starch before the heat sets the pudding.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Potatothe original

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