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Dessert

Sweet Potato Pudding

A baked sweet potato pudding with butter, milk, eggs, sugar, lemon, nutmeg, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sweet potato and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 414 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Boil the sweet potatoes until very tender.

  2. Add the butter and rub through a sieve.

  3. Mix in the milk, beaten eggs, sugar, salt, lemon juice and rind, nutmeg, and brandy.

Bake

  1. Bake in a buttered dish or in a pastry shell.

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. Sweet potato + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together414 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Sweet potato + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together314 recipes

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

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet potatoes
Form the bulk of the pudding, giving body and a soft, smooth texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing to a smooth, tender texture.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set into a firm, custard-like pudding when baked.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps with browning on the surface during baking.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the mixture so it bakes into a creamy texture.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour, with its alcohol largely cooking off in the oven.

The step that matters

Rub the cooked sweet potatoes through a sieve. Sieving while the potatoes are still hot breaks up fibres and lumps, giving a smooth filling. Lumps left in will show in the baked pudding.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  1. Sweet potatothe original
  2. Arrowrootfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Asparagusfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, egg, sugar, lemon, nutmeg, brandy. 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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