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Dessert

Sweet Potato Pudding

A baked sweet potato custard with butter, sugar, spices, eggs, and a puff pastry border, dusted with white sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil and peel the sweet potatoes, then mash and sieve them until light.

Make the filling

  1. Cream together the butter and sugar in a bowl.

  2. Add the grated nutmeg, cinnamon, and brandy to the mixture.

  3. Beat the eggs until smooth, then stir them into the butter and sugar mixture alternately with the mashed sweet potatoes.

  4. Mix everything thoroughly by stirring well.

Bake and finish

  1. Prepare a deep baking dish with a border of puff pastry around the edges.

  2. Pour the sweet potato mixture into the dish.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until set, then cool and dust with white sugar.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cinnamon + brandytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,199 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 moisture that give the pudding its soft, smooth body.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set it into a firm, sliceable custard when baked.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that makes the texture tender and silky.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning on the cooked surface.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour depth to the filling.

The step that matters

Beat the eggs and fold them in gently. Eggs set the pudding as it bakes. Beating them smooth before combining keeps lumps out, and stirring them in alternately with the potato mixture helps them blend evenly so the custard bakes uniformly rather than curdling or separating.

“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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