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Dessert

Sweet Potato Pudding

A baked dessert made from boiled sweet potatoes, eggs, sugar, butter, nutmeg, lemon rind, brandy, and pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

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 the filling

  1. Boil the sweet potatoes until very tender.

  2. While hot, press the sweet potatoes through a grater until fine.

  3. In a bowl, combine the grated sweet potatoes with the beaten eggs, sugar, butter, nutmeg, lemon rind, and brandy.

Bake and finish

  1. Line a dish with the pie crust and pour the mixture into it.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until set.

  3. Once done, sprinkle the top with finely pulverized 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. Sweet potato + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together414 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Sweet potato + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together314 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,311 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. 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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set into a firm, sliceable custard when baked.
Sweet potatoes
Provide the bulk, moisture and smooth texture of the pudding filling.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a softer, more tender texture.
Fine sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps it brown lightly on top during baking.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour depth to the filling.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs thicken as they heat, so the pudding must be baked only until the centre is set. Overbaking makes the custard-like filling dry, curdled and grainy.

Swap the sweet potato

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

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

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