Skip to main content
Dessert

Sweet Potato Pudding

A baked sweet potato custard with eggs, butter, sugar, nutmeg, lemon peel, and brandy, topped with citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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. While hot, rub the sweet potatoes through a colander.

  3. Add the beaten eggs, powdered sugar, softened butter, nutmeg, lemon peel, and brandy to the sweet potatoes. Mix until well combined.

Bake and serve

  1. Line a baking dish with pastry.

  2. Pour the mixture into the dish.

  3. Bake until set, then sprinkle with sugar and top with bits of citron.

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

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

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

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

  4. Nutmeg + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,311 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet potatoes
Provide the bulk and body of the pudding once mashed smooth.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set it into a firm, sliceable custard when baked.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender, smooth texture to the filling.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the filling and dissolves smoothly into the warm purée.
Brandy
Adds a warm, aromatic flavour to the filling.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs thicken as they heat, so underbaking leaves a runny centre while overbaking can make the custard curdle, weep and turn tough. Check for a firm, set centre rather than relying on time alone.

Swap the sweet potato

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

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

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

More sweet potato pudding recipes

Carolina 3 See all 116 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesDeep-Fried Potato BallsDeep-Fried Potato Balls119 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes