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Potato Puff

A baked dish of mashed potatoes mixed with butter, eggs, milk, nutmeg, parsley, and seasonings, folded with beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Potato Puff

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Cream the butter in a bowl.

  2. Mix the mashed potatoes with the creamed butter.

  3. Whip the egg yolks with the milk and stir into the potato mixture.

  4. Add nutmeg, parsley, and season with salt and pepper.

  5. Fold in the beaten egg whites until stiff.

Bake

  1. Transfer the mixture to a buttered pie dish.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 1 hour.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks enrich the custard and whites, whipped and folded in, lighten the puff and help it rise.
Mashed potatoes
Form the bulk of the dish, giving a soft, fluffy body once baked.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, softening the potato mixture and adding flavour.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the mixture so it bakes tender rather than dry.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites until stiff. Whites trap air when whipped, and folding gently keeps that air in the mixture. Overmixing knocks the air out, so the puff bakes flatter and denser.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg, milk, nutmeg, pepper, parsley):

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Shallotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, milk, nutmeg, pepper, parsley. 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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