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Dessert

A Richer Potato Pudding

A sweet potato pudding flavored with lemon zest, brandy, and candied orange, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 your oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, beat together the mashed potatoes, butter, sugar, eggs, lemon zest, and salt until smooth.

  2. Stir in the brandy until well combined.

Bake and serve

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

  2. Decorate the top with slices of candied orange or lemon.

  3. Drizzle a little clarified butter on top.

  4. Bake in the preheated oven until set and 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. 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 set it into a firm, custard-like structure as they bake.
Mashed potatoes
Provide the bulk and soft body of the pudding.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the top brown.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and contributes to golden browning on the surface.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour that carries through the baked pudding.

The step that matters

Bake until set and golden. Eggs set as they heat, so underbaking leaves the pudding loose in the centre, while overbaking makes it dry and rubbery. Stop when the top is golden and the centre has firmed.

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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