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Dessert

Sweet Potato Pudding

A baked sweet potato pudding made with butter, sugar, eggs, wine, brandy, rose water, and mixed spice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the sweet potato

  1. Boil and peel sweet potatoes, then weigh ¼ pound when cold.

  2. Mash the sweet potato until very smooth and rub it through a sieve.

Make the filling

  1. Cream together the sugar and butter.

  2. Beat the eggs until light, then stir them into the butter and sugar alternately with the sweet potato.

  3. Gradually add the liquor, rose-water, and spice, stirring well.

Bake and serve

  1. Spread puff pastry on a soup plate, pour in the mixture, and bake for about 30 minutes at 350°F (175°C).

  2. Grate sugar over the 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.

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  2. Wine + brandytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Rose + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Brandy + rosetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together560 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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 moist, dense body of the pudding filling.
Eggs
Set during baking to bind the filling and give it structure.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a smooth, tender texture.
Powdered white sugar
Sweetens the filling and dissolves smoothly into the creamed butter.
Mixed wine and brandy
Adds liquid and alcohol-based aroma to the filling.

The step that matters

Adding the sweet potato and eggs alternately. Alternating small additions keeps the butter and sugar mixture emulsified, so the filling stays smooth instead of curdling or separating.

Swap the sweet potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, butter, wine, brandy, rose, 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.

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