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Dessert

Yam Pudding

A baked dessert made from boiled yam, butter, sugar, spices, eggs, rose water, and citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Yam and cinnamon share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Yam 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 yam

  1. Boil or roast the yam until tender.

  2. Peel the skin off the yam and pound it very fine.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the yam with butter, sugar, mace, cinnamon, and 6 egg yolks.

  2. Beat the mixture with rose water until smooth.

  3. Fold in the chopped citron.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until set.

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. Yam + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together41 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Mace + rosetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together498 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Cinnamon + rosetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together892 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

Yam
Forms the main body of the pudding, giving it bulk and a soft, starchy texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing tenderness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps it brown lightly in the oven.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the mixture, and their proteins set it during baking.

The step that matters

Baking until set. Egg proteins coagulate as the pudding heats, so underbaking leaves it runny while overbaking can make it dry and grainy. Check that the centre has firmed before removing it from the oven.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (yam, butter, sugar, cinnamon, egg, rose):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against yam, butter, sugar, cinnamon, egg, rose. 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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