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Dessert

Sweet Potato Pudding

A baked custard made with sweet potatoes, butter, sugar, eggs, spices, lemon, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Let the sweet potatoes cool completely, then grate them.

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  3. Add the egg yolks, cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon juice, and lemon rind to the mixture.

  4. Gradually beat in the grated sweet potatoes until smooth.

  5. Stir in the brandy, then fold in the beaten egg whites.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered dish and bake until set.

  2. Serve cold.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Sweet potato + cinnamontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together539 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

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

  5. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

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 body of the pudding, giving it a soft, dense texture.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender crumb by carrying fat through the batter.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the batter, while whipped whites lighten it and help it set.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps create a soft, tender texture when creamed with butter.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites hold air only if they are beaten to stiff peaks and folded in gently. Overmixing deflates the foam, so the pudding bakes up denser and less light.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sweet potato, butter, sugar, cinnamon, egg, nutmeg, brandy. 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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