Name: Sweet Potato Pudding-
Ingredients: 1 pound sweet potatoes; 6 eggs, beaten; ½ pound butter; ¾ pound powdered sugar; 1 grated nutmeg; lemon peel, to taste; ⅓ cup brandy; sugar, for sprinkling; pastry for lining the dish

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

Boil the sweet potatoes until very tender.
While hot, rub the sweet potatoes through a colander.
Add the beaten eggs, butter, powdered sugar, nutmeg, lemon peel, and brandy to the potatoes.
Line a dish with pastry and fill it with the mixture.
Sprinkle sugar on top 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.

Sweet potato + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together414 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Sweet potato + lemontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together314 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Nutmeg + brandytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,311 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
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

Swap the sweet potato

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

Shallotfits about as well
Arrowrootfits about as well
Sweet potatothe original
Chivefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, sugar, nutmeg, lemon, brandy. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.