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An Excellent Plain Potatoe Pudding

A baked potato pudding made with boiled potatoes, butter, eggs, cream, wine, lemon, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 ↓

An Excellent Plain Potatoe 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 the mixture

  1. Mash the boiled potatoes until smooth.

  2. In a bowl, cream the butter and add the egg yolks, mixing well.

  3. Stir in the cream, white wine, salt, lemon juice, and lemon rind.

  4. Fold in the mashed potatoes and beaten egg whites until frothy.

  5. Add sugar to taste and mix gently.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish.

  2. Optionally, add a crust.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set and lightly golden.

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. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide the bulk and a soft, starchy body that gives the pudding its texture.
Eggs
Set the pudding when baked and add structure, with whipped whites lightening the mixture.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender, smooth mouthfeel.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the pudding soft and creamy.
Lemon
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the sweetness of the pudding.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air in the whites, which helps the pudding rise and stay light. Stirring hard deflates the foam and leaves a dense result.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg, cream, white wine, lemon, sugar):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, cream, white wine, lemon, sugar. 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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