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Dessert

Maid of Honour Pudding

A baked potato pudding with butter, sugar, eggs, lemon, puff pastry, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,230 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Maid of Honour Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the filling

  1. Boil the potatoes until very soft.

  2. Mix in the butter until well combined.

  3. Stir in the powdered sugar.

  4. Beat the eggs well and add them to the mixture.

  5. Add the juice of the lemon and the finely grated lemon rind.

  6. Keep stirring until the mixture is perfectly smooth.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie dish lined with puff pastry.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 1 hour.

  3. Serve hot or cold, with lemon creams if desired.

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. Potato + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  3. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Cooked and mashed, they give the filling its body and soft, smooth texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a tender, moist texture.
Eggs
Bind the filling and help it set into a custard-like texture when baked.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and dissolves easily into the smooth filling.
Lemon
Its juice and rind add acidity and bright citrus aroma to the filling.
Puff pastry
Forms the crisp, flaky case that holds the filling while it bakes.

The step that matters

Keep stirring until the mixture is perfectly smooth. Thorough stirring evenly blends the mashed potato, butter, sugar and eggs so no lumps remain and the filling bakes with a uniform texture.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, egg, lemon, sherry):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, lemon, sherry. 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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