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An Excellent Plain Potato Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

An Excellent Plain 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 the mixture

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

  2. Mash the boiled potatoes and mix with butter until smooth.

  3. Add the egg yolks, cream, white wine, salt, lemon juice, and lemon rind; beat until frothy.

  4. Fold in the egg whites gently.

  5. Add sugar to taste.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased baking dish.

  2. Bake for about 30-40 minutes or until set and lightly browned.

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

Boiled potatoes
Form the bulk of the pudding and give it a soft, starchy body.
Butter
Adds richness and smooth texture to the mashed potato base.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help the pudding set as it bakes.
Egg whites
Folded in for lightness, helping the pudding rise and stay airy.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving a smoother, silkier texture.
Lemon
Its juice and rind add acidity and bright aroma to balance sweetness.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Egg whites hold air only when whipped and folded gently; overmixing deflates them, so the pudding loses lightness and rise.

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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