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Dessert

Sweet Potatoe Pudding

A baked pudding made with boiled sweet potatoes, sugar, butter, brandy, eggs, nutmeg, lemon rind, and pastry.

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 Potatoe 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

  1. Boil the sweet potatoes and mash them until very smooth.

  2. In a bowl, combine the mashed potatoes, sugar, butter, brandy or wine, eggs, grated nutmeg, and lemon rind, and mix until well combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a prepared under crust pastry.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven 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. Brandy + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,311 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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 filling, giving it a smooth, soft set.
Eggs
Bind the filling and set during baking to give it a firm, sliceable texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing to a tender, smooth texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning on the surface of the baked pudding.
Brandy or wine
Adds aroma and a touch of acidity that brightens the sweet filling.

The step that matters

Mash the sweet potatoes until very smooth. Any lumps left in the mashed potato will stay in the baked custard-like filling and cannot be smoothed out later. Thorough mashing gives an even, silky texture once the eggs set.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Arrowrootfits about as well
  3. Sweet potatothe original
  4. Chivefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, brandy, egg, 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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