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Dessert

Potato-flour Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with potato flour, milk, cinnamon, lemon peel, sugar, eggs, sweet wine, and marmalade.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Cinnamon and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Potato-flour Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil the cinnamon, lemon peel, and sugar in the milk.

  2. Strain the mixture.

  3. Stir in the potato flour mixed with a little cold milk.

  4. Stir until nearly cold.

  5. Add the beaten eggs, sweet wine or spirits, and marmalade.

Bake

  1. Bake in a Dutch oven.

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. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar 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

Potato flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, set custard as it cooks and cools.
Eggs
Set when baked, giving the pudding structure and a tender, custardy body.
Milk
Forms the base of the pudding and provides moisture and richness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the flavour of the eggs and milk.
Marmalade
Adds fruity sweetness and a bit of bitter citrus aroma.

The step that matters

Stir in the potato flour mixed with a little cold milk. Potato flour must be dispersed in cold liquid first, otherwise it clumps when added to hot milk. Stirring it in smoothly and letting the mixture cool slightly before adding the eggs keeps the custard smooth and prevents the eggs from scrambling.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, cinnamon, lemon, sugar, flour, egg, wine):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cinnamon, lemon, sugar, flour, egg, wine. 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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