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Dessert

Potatoe Cheese Curd

A sweet cheese curd made with mashed potatoes, butter, eggs, powdered sugar, crumbled cake, lemon essence, and optional currants.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,230 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Potatoe Cheese Curd

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil or roast the potatoes until tender, then remove the skins and mash them finely.

Make the mixture

  1. Cream the butter in a bowl until smooth.

  2. Add the egg yolks, powdered sugar, crumbled cake, and essence of lemon to the butter, mixing well.

  3. Incorporate the potato pulp into the mixture as you would for pound cake.

  4. If desired, fold in a few currants.

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 + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Mealy potatoes
Provide starchy bulk and a soft, tender crumb in the mixture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a smooth, tender texture.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and add structure and richness.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and dissolves easily into the butter for a smooth base.

The step that matters

Creaming the butter until smooth. Beating butter until smooth traps air and produces an even, light texture; under-creamed butter leaves the mixture dense and lumpy before the other ingredients are added.

Swap the currant

The recipe marks currant as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, butter, egg, sugar, lemon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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