Name: Potato Pudding
Ingredients: 1 pound potatoes; ½ pound melted butter; ½ pound powdered sugar; 2 ounces blanched sweet almonds, pounded; 2 tablespoons rose water; 8 eggs, well beaten; ½ nutmeg, grated; Sweet sauce: wine, sugar, butter, and grated nutmeg

Why it works: Almond and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,115 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Potato Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pudding

Boil the potatoes until tender.
Peel and pound the boiled potatoes in a mortar.
Mix the pounded potatoes with melted butter, powdered sugar, pounded almonds, rose water, beaten eggs, and grated nutmeg.

Cook and serve

Pour the mixture into a buttered basin or cloth.
Boil the mixture.
Serve with a sweet sauce made from wine, sugar, butter, and grated nutmeg.

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.

Almond + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,115 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,052 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Potato + almondtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together337 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,245 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Almond + rosetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,465 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes: Provide the starchy bulk that gives the pudding its body.
Eggs: Bind the mixture and set it as it cooks, giving structure.
Melted butter: Adds richness and moisture, softening the texture of the pudding.
Powdered sugar: Sweetens the pudding and dissolves evenly into the mixture.
Blanched sweet almonds: Add fat and a nutty flavour, with body from the pounded almonds.

Swap the potato

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

Arrowrootfits better
Sweet potatofits better
Spinachfits better
Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, almond, rose, egg, nutmeg, sauce. 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.