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Potato Hasty Pudding

A baked potato mixture served hot with sugar dusting and jam or sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Potato Hasty Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make and bake

  1. In a bowl, combine mashed potatoes, butter, egg, milk, and currants or raisins. Beat until light.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto a greased baking sheet.

  3. Bake in the oven until hot and brown.

Serve

  1. Serve on a hot dish, dusted with sugar and accompanied by jam or sauce.

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

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

  2. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

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

  4. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Mashed potatoes
Provides the bulk and soft, moist body of the pudding.
Egg
Binds the mixture and helps it set as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the surface brown.
Milk
Loosens the mixture to a soft, spoonable consistency.

The step that matters

Beating until light. Beating incorporates air and loosens the potato mixture so the spoonfuls rise slightly and bake lighter rather than dense. Overbeating can make the potatoes gluey, so stop once it looks airy.

Swap the currant

The recipe marks currant as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, butter, egg, milk, sugar, sauce):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, egg, milk, sugar, 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.

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