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Dessert

A Richer Potato Pudding

A sweet potato pudding flavored with lemon rind, brandy, and candied rind, topped with clarified butter and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

A Richer 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. Beat together the mashed potatoes, butter, sugar, eggs, lemon rind, and salt until well combined.

  2. Add the brandy and mix thoroughly.

  3. Pour the mixture into a thickly buttered dish or mold.

Decorate and bake

  1. Decorate the top with slices of candied orange or lemon rind.

  2. Drizzle a little clarified butter on top and sprinkle with white sugar.

  3. Bake for 40 minutes.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Potato + orangetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together537 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

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

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

  5. Brandy + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set into a custard-like texture when baked.
Mashed potatoes
Provide the bulk and soft, moist body of the pudding.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps browning on the surface.
Fine sugar
Sweetens the pudding and aids browning of the top.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour that carries through the baked pudding.

The step that matters

Thickly butter the dish or mold. Butter coats the surface so the pudding releases cleanly after baking and the edges do not stick or scorch.

Swap the potato

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

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

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