Potato pudding is a savory and/or sweet dish that was made in a pot oven, or bastible. The adjectives used to describe this recipe usually range from “old” to “ancient.” It can contain simply potatoes and, flour, or sugar, saffron, butter, eggs, caraway seeds, spices, and even apple. I have come across descriptions of this type of dish in many sources, but most are pretty vague on ingredients.
In Regina Sexton’s “Food and culinary cultures in pre-Famine Ireland,” she actually traces the evolution of potato pies and puddings using recipes from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. She points out that in following global trends, potato pudding didn’t fall away but instead evolved into a refined, sweet dish, albeit with the classic “savory/sweet” component that defines many medieval dishes. Instead of being the star of the dish, the potato’s flavor is now overwhelmed by lemon, and it becomes a “hidden ingredient.”
Here are some of the recipes she examines in her work:
National Library of Ireland (NLI), Townley Hall Papers, MS 9,563, Mrs Jane Bury’s Receipt Booke, 1700:
How to Make a Potteato Puding: Take you Poteatoes and boyle ym very well and pound the dryest of them to a peaste then mix Quart/Pint? of Sweet Creame with them till it is as thin as a Batter beat ye yeolks of tenn Eggs and mix with it and half a pound of Pouder Sugar and a greated Nutmegg and half a pound of fresh Butter Some Blanched Almonds and a Little Canded Ornige Laying the marrow of two bones in Pretty Bigg pieces and Soe beake it let your Creame be boyld with some S/C?inainon before you mix it with your Poteatoes
How to Make a Potatoe Pudding: Take 10 Eggs, Whites and yolks a pint of sweet cream a pound of potatoes peeled and well bruised a quarter of a pound of sugar two spoonfulls of flower a whole nutmegg grated mix all together and put into your Bagg an houre and a half boyleing will serve add to it two spoonfulls of Brandy
NLI, Leitrim Papers, MS 9,929, late 18th/early 19th-century recipe book:
A Potatoe Pudding: A pound of potatoes Boyled an pounded three quarters of a pound of Butter melted without water as much sugar ten Eggs half the whites mix them well together with a little Brandy the peel of a whole limmon grated and the juice squezzed in put a puff
peast round the dish three qrs. of an hour will beak it.
NLI MS 5,606, Mary Ponsonby, early to mid-19th-century recipe book:
Potatoe Pudding: Take some potatoes, boil and peel them, pass them through a hair sieve, add the rhind of a Lemon, and four ounces of butter, beat up two eggs, and the juice of two Lemons, add all together, and sweeten them to your taste, put them in a dish or bowl, and bake them in a smart oven.
Florence Irwin, who was looking for a universal recipe for this “ancient Hallowe’en dinner dish, still made in country and mountain districts in Ulster”, published a “County Tyrone farmhouse” version in 1936 that is very similar to the one below but sat overnight with an additional four hours of baking the next day. She said she had only tried it once, but that it was sweet “due to the fact that the slow baking had dextrinised the starch—that is, turned it into sugar.” She also said that it was “eaten like champ—a large portion on each plate, a hole in the centre in which to put a generous lump of butter.” She also quoted a girl from Tyrone, of a family of fifteen, who told her it took two stones of potatoes to make the “pratie pudding” for the entire family.
This sounds like purdy pudding, a traditional Halloween dessert in northern Ireland that took several days of cooking before it was ready to eat. There is even a “Purdy Pudding Appreciation” Group on Facebook, who go by this recipe:
Potato Pudding Recipe
First I tried the recipe from John Murphy’s Traditional Irish Recipes, who assured us that it “tasted delicious.” It was surprisingly edible. I added a good pinch of allspice to this as well.
INGREDIENTS
milk
mixed spice
6oz flour
1lb cooked potatoes
salt and pepper
METHOD
1. Mash potatoes and add enough flour to form a pliable dough.
2. Add spice, salt, and pepper. Shape into a ball and put into a greased pot oven or heat-proof dish.
3. Make holes in dough and fill with sweet milk.
*Sweet milk usually refers to regular milk, that is, not buttermilk.
4. Cover and bake over fire or stream for four hours.
Potato & Oat Pudding Recipe
Next I tried this interesting version published in the Drogheda Argus and Leinster Journal, 12 May 1923. I think it could have done well with more sugar, but it can always be sweetened to taste by the individual diner.
INGREDIENTS
2oz flour
4oz rolled oats
4oz mashed potato
pinch salt
teaspoon baking powder
two tablespoons golden syrup or treacle
milk or water
METHOD
1. Mix together flour, rolled oats, and mashed potato with salt and baking powder.
2. Add golden syrup or treacle, then enough milk or water to make a “rather liquid batter.”
3. Steam for three hours. Serve with custard sauce.
cleite agus cnámh 