Skip to main content
Dessert

Another Sweet Potato Pudding

A baked sweet potato pudding made with mashed sweet potatoes, butter, sugar, eggs, nutmeg, and mace or cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Another 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

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

Mix and bake

  1. Add the mashed sweet potatoes, eggs, grated nutmeg, and mace or cinnamon. Mix well.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased baking dish.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until set and lightly browned.

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 + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Sweet potato + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,151 recipes

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

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 moist, starchy body of the pudding.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and helps trap air when creamed with sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps create a light, fluffy base when creamed.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set during baking to give the pudding its structure.
Nutmeg
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the pudding.

The step that matters

Bake until set and lightly browned. Eggs set as they heat, so underbaking leaves the pudding loose and wet in the centre, while overbaking can make it dry and rubbery. Watch for a firm centre and light browning on top.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

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

Deep-Fried Potato BallsDeep-Fried Potato Balls119 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesSweet Corn PuddingSweet Corn Pudding8 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipes