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Dessert

Sweet Potato Pudding

A baked sweet potato pudding with butter, sugar, spices, water, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sweet potato and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 314 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

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. Steam and mash the sweet potatoes.

  2. Add the butter, sugar, spices, boiling water, and lemon juice to the mashed sweet potatoes. Mix well and pour into a well-buttered baking dish.

Bake

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until brown on top.

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 + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together314 recipes

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

  2. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Form the main body and starchy structure of the pudding once mashed and baked.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, moist texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown during baking.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Bake until brown on top. Sugar browns through caramelization and the mashed sweet potato sets as it bakes. Pulling the dish too early leaves the top pale and the center loose; baking too long can dry and darken it too far.

Swap the sweet potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, lemon. 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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