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Dessert

Irish Potato Pudding

A baked custard-like pudding made from mashed potatoes, cream, eggs, butter, sugar, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Irish 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 mixture

  1. Rub the mashed potato through a sieve before measuring.

  2. Stir in the cream, beaten egg yolks, melted butter, sugar, lemon rind, and lemon juice.

  3. Mix thoroughly and fold in the beaten egg whites.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a pudding dish at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

  2. Serve with a hot or cold 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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks enrich the custard and whites, folded in, lighten the pudding as it sets.
Mashed potato
Provides the body and starchy bulk that gives the pudding its soft, thick texture.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, giving the pudding a smooth, tender crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silky mouthfeel.
Lemon
Juice and rind add acidity and bright aroma that balance the sweetness.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the whites, which lifts the mixture as it bakes. Stirring vigorously deflates the foam and leaves a dense pudding.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

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