Skip to main content
Dessert

Potato Pudding

A baked pudding made from boiled potatoes, grated sponge cake, sugar, spices, butter, eggs, rose water, orange peel, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

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 base

  1. Peel and boil the potatoes until tender.

  2. Mash the potatoes through a colander while hot.

  3. Mix in the butter and beat until light.

  4. Beat the eggs and add to the mixture.

Flavour and bake

  1. Stir in the sugar, mace, cinnamon, nutmeg, rose water, orange peel, and sherry.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased baking dish.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) 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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

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

  4. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Mashed potatoes form the body of the pudding and give it a soft, moist texture.
Eggs
Eggs bind the mixture and set during baking to give the pudding its structure.
Butter
Butter adds richness and fat, which makes the pudding tender and smooth.
Sugar
Sugar adds sweetness and helps the top brown as the pudding bakes.
Stale sponge cakes
Stale sponge cake adds body and absorbs liquid, giving a lighter, more cake-like crumb.
Sherry
Sherry adds acidity and aroma that balance the sweetness of the pudding.

The step that matters

Beat the eggs and add to the mixture. Eggs set as they heat, so the mixture needs to be smooth and evenly combined before baking to avoid lumps and an uneven, curdled texture.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, mace, cinnamon, nutmeg, butter, egg, rose):

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, mace, cinnamon, nutmeg, butter, egg, rose. 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.

More potato pudding recipes

Sweet 116Irish 14Brandy 9Baked 7Cottage 6Lemon 5 See all 236 →

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesDeep-Fried Potato BallsDeep-Fried Potato Balls119 recipesOrange GelatinOrange Gelatin100 recipes