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Dessert

Potato Pudding

A baked sweet potato pudding with eggs, butter, sugar, almonds, and cream, optionally flavored with brandy or sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Potato Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the pudding

  1. In a bowl, mix the mashed potatoes, eggs, butter, sugar, chopped almonds, and cream until well combined.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a baking dish and smooth the top.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for 1 hour or until set and lightly golden.

  2. If desired, add brandy or sherry before serving.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  4. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide the starchy bulk and soft, moist body of the pudding.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set it as it bakes, giving a custard-like structure.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing to a tender, smooth texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown lightly in the oven.
Sweet almonds
Add nutty flavour and a slightly firm texture to the pudding.

The step that matters

Bake until just set. Eggs set as they heat, so baking too long can make the pudding dry, firm, or grainy. Checking for a set centre and light golden top helps avoid overbaking.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, sugar, almond, cream, brandy. 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.

More potato pudding recipes

Sweet 116Irish 14Brandy 9Baked 7Cottage 6Lemon 5 See all 236 →

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