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Dessert

Sweet Potato Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 potatoes

  1. Parboil the sweet potatoes.

  2. Grate the sweet potatoes.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg yolks with the sugar until well combined.

  2. Stir in the butter, grated nutmeg, grated lemon, and the wine or brandy.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently until combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish.

  2. Bake 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. 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. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet potatoes
Provide the bulk and starchy body that gives the pudding its dense, moist texture.
Egg yolks
Add richness and emulsify with the butter, helping the pudding set smoothly when baked.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in, they trap air and lighten the mixture as it rises and sets.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, moist crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps tenderise the custard-like batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites hold air only when whipped, and overmixing or stirring vigorously deflates them. Fold gently so the batter keeps its lightness and rises in the oven.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits about as well
  3. Sweet potatothe original
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

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