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Dessert

Potato Paste

A rolled paste of boiled potatoes and flour, flavored with salt and water, topped with jam or preserve.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,355 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Potato Paste

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Mash the boiled potatoes while they are warm.

  2. Rub the mashed potatoes with the flour until well mixed.

  3. Add the salt and a little cold water to form a stiff paste.

  4. Beat and roll out the paste three or four times, making it very thin the last time.

Roll and fill

  1. Spread the jam or preserve over the paste.

  2. Rub the edges with water and roll it up like a bolster.

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 + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + black curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together51 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Potato + black curranttop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Boiled potatoes
Provide the moist, starchy base that makes the paste tender.
Flour
Gives the paste structure so it holds together when rolled.
Black currant jam, raspberries, or any sort of preserve
Adds sweetness and fruit flavour to the filling inside the roll.

The step that matters

Rolling the paste very thin. Rolling out and beating the paste several times develops gluten and evens out its texture, while a very thin final sheet keeps the roll light rather than dense and doughy.

Swap the black currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, flour):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Black currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, flour. 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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