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Dessert

Potato Pudding

A baked dessert made with mashed potatoes, apples, raisins, sugar, spices, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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

  1. Boil the potatoes.

  2. Mash the boiled potatoes.

  3. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  4. Beat the eggs separately.

Make the batter

  1. Add the lemon juice while hot.

  2. Combine the mashed potatoes, raisins, chopped apples, and spices.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg whites last.

  4. Pour the mixture into a greased baking dish.

Bake

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until set.

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. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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
Set the pudding and add structure as they cook, and the whites add lightness when beaten.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown lightly as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, softening the texture of the pudding.
Apples
Add moisture and fruity tartness that balances the sweetness.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites last. Beaten whites hold air that gives lightness. Overmixing or stirring them in too early knocks the air out, leaving a dense pudding instead of a light one.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, apple, sugar, butter, cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon):

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, apple, sugar, butter, cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon. 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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Sweet 116Irish 14Brandy 9Baked 7Cottage 6Lemon 5 See all 236 →

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