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Dessert

Sweet-potato Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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

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 filling

  1. Boil the sweet potato until thoroughly done, then mash it finely.

  2. While the potato is hot, add the sugar and butter, and set aside to cool.

  3. Beat the eggs until light, then add the nutmeg, lemon peel, and wine or brandy.

Bake and finish

  1. Line tin plates with puff pastry and pour in the sweet potato mixture.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until set.

  3. Once baked, cover the top with thinly sliced preserved citron or quince marmalade.

  4. Sprinkle granulated sugar on top and serve with a glass of rich milk for each person.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Sweet potato + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together314 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 potato
Forms the bulk of the pudding and gives it a soft, moist body.
Eggs
Set when baked, giving the pudding its structure and firm texture.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender mouthfeel to the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps browning on the surface.
Sweet cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the filling.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Underbaking leaves the egg-thickened filling runny, while overbaking can make it dry and rubbery as the proteins tighten too much. Check that the centre is just firm.

Swap the sweet potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, cream, wine, nutmeg, 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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