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Dessert

Sweet Potato Custard

A baked custard made with mashed sweet potatoes, eggs, butter, milk, and syrup, flavored with nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Custard

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. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, combine the sweet potatoes, beaten eggs, butter, milk, and syrup.

  2. Flavor the mixture with nutmeg.

  3. Beat all ingredients together until well combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a deep pie pan lined with a bottom crust.

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Sweet potato + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together596 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sweet potatoes
Provide the main body and sweet, earthy flavor of the custard.
Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, giving it a firm, sliceable structure.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the custard smooth and tender.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich mouthfeel and smooth texture.
Syrup
Adds sweetness and flavor, adjustable to taste.

The step that matters

Bake until set and lightly browned. Eggs set as they heat, and overbaking makes the custard grainy, weeping, or rubbery. Pull it when the center is just set and still slightly wobbly, since it firms as it cools.

Swap the sweet potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, milk, syrup, nutmeg):

  1. Sweet potatothe original
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Chivefits less well
  4. Capsicumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, milk, syrup, 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 custard recipes

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