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Dessert

Sweet Potato Custard Pie

A custard pie made with mashed sweet potato, butter, sugar, lemon, vanilla, cinnamon, milk, and eggs, topped with currant jelly and meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,287 recipes. Both carry 4-methoxybenzaldehyde, which smells sweet, anise. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Custard Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Boil the sweet potato until tender, then mash it.

  3. In a bowl, mix the mashed sweet potato, butter, sugar, lemon zest, lemon juice, vanilla, cinnamon, milk, and egg yolks until smooth.

Bake and top

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and bake until the custard is set.

  2. Let the pie cool, then spread currant jelly on top.

  3. Beat the egg whites with a little sugar until stiff peaks form, then spread over the pie.

  4. Brown the pie in the oven briefly before serving.

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. Vanilla + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  2. Sweet potato + cinnamontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together539 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Vanilla + milktop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  4. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet potato
Provides the bulk and body of the custard filling, along with sweetness and color.
Egg yolks
Set during baking to thicken the custard and give it a rich, smooth structure.
Egg whites
Beaten to stiff peaks, they form a light meringue topping that browns in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, tender texture in the filling.
Milk
Adds moisture and liquid so the custard becomes smooth and pourable before setting.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the egg whites hold stiff peaks and brown.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to stiff peaks. Egg whites must be beaten until stiff and spread over the pie so the meringue holds its shape and browns evenly. Under-beaten whites can weep or collapse, while any trace of fat or yolk can stop them from whipping properly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sweet potato, butter, sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, milk, egg):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sweet potato, butter, sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, milk, 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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