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Dessert

Potato Custard

A baked custard made with sweet potatoes, eggs, sugar, milk, butter, nutmeg, lemon, and wine or brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

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 the filling

  1. Boil the sweet Carolina potatoes until tender, then strain them through a sieve.

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs with the sugar, milk, and butter until well combined.

  3. Add a little nutmeg and essence of lemon to the mixture.

  4. Stir in the strained potatoes and mix well.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into pie plates lined with pastry.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set and lightly golden.

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

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  5. Potato + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet carolina potatoes
Adds body and thickness, so the custard is a firm filling rather than a thin liquid.
Eggs
Set as they cook, giving the custard its structure and firmness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the custard tender.
Milk
Supplies liquid that cooks into a smooth, soft set.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silky mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Bake until just set. Egg proteins set as they heat, and overbaking pushes them too far, making the custard grainy, curdled or weepy. Remove it when the centre is just firm and still slightly wobbly, since it keeps setting as it cools.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Sweet potatofits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

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