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Dessert

Sweet Potato Pudding

A baked custard made from sweet potatoes, sugar, butter, eggs, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sweet potato and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 314 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. 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.

Make the batter

  1. Pass the boiled sweet potatoes through a sieve.

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  3. Gradually add the sweet potatoes while beating continuously.

  4. Slowly incorporate the beaten eggs.

  5. Add the juice and grated rind of the lemons.

Bake

  1. Bake in pie plates with or without crust 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 + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together314 recipes

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

  2. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Sweet potato + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,151 recipes

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

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 moisture that give the pudding its soft, dense body.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to add richness and a tender, fine-textured crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps when creamed with butter to trap air.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set during baking to give the pudding its firm structure.
Lemon
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the sweet, rich filling.

The step that matters

Slowly incorporate the beaten eggs. Adding eggs gradually keeps the mixture smooth and emulsified. Dumping them in at once can cause curdling or separation, which leaves the pudding grainy after baking.

Swap the sweet potato

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

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

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