Skip to main content
Dessert

Sweet Potato Pudding

A baked sweet potato pudding made with boiled sweet potatoes, sugar, butter, cream, milk, eggs, nutmeg, cinnamon, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil the sweet potatoes until tender, then peel and pass them through a sieve.

  2. In a bowl, mix the sieved potatoes with the egg yolks, cream, sugar, butter, nutmeg, cinnamon, and salt.

Assemble and bake

  1. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

  2. Line a baking pan with puff pastry.

  3. Fill the pan with the sweet potato mixture.

  4. Bake at 400°F (200°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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  5. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet potatoes
Form the bulk of the filling, giving a soft, smooth body once sieved.
Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, giving the pudding structure and firmness.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, producing a softer, silkier texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, tender mouthfeel.
Milk
Adds moisture and liquid that helps the filling set into a custard.
Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning on the surface during baking.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites hold air when beaten, and folding gently keeps that air in the mixture. Overmixing deflates the whites, which makes the pudding denser and less light after baking.

Swap the sweet potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, cream, milk, nutmeg, cinnamon, egg. 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 pudding recipes

Carolina 3 See all 116 →

You might also like

Deep-Fried Potato BallsDeep-Fried Potato Balls119 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipes