Name: Grated Potato Pudding
Ingredients: 4 sweet potatoes, peeled and grated; 6 eggs; ½ pound sugar; ½ pound melted butter; nutmeg, to taste; a little allspice; ¼ teaspoon salt

Why it works: Nutmeg and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,331 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Grated 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.

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
In a bowl, beat the eggs with the sugar and melted butter.
Season the mixture with nutmeg, allspice, and salt.
Stir in the grated sweet potatoes until well mixed.
Pour the mixture into a pastry crust.
Cut slits in the crust, about 2 inches wide, and fold them to form a half square.

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.

Nutmeg + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,331 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Sweet potato + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together414 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
Sweet potato + allspicetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together105 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).
Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together24,377 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Sweet potato + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,151 recipes

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

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

Swap the allspice

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

Cinnamonfits better
Cardamomfits about as well
Allspicethe original
Clovefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sweet potato, egg, sugar, butter, nutmeg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.