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Dessert

Sweet Potato Custard

A custard made from mashed sweet potatoes, eggs, butter, milk, syrup, and nutmeg, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Custard

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. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, combine the sweet potatoes, beaten eggs, butter, milk, syrup, and nutmeg.

  2. Beat the mixture well until smooth.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a deep pie pan lined with a bottom crust.

  2. Bake until set and lightly browned.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Sweet potato + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together596 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 custard filling.
Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, giving it a firm, sliceable texture.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness, loosening the mixture for a smooth custard.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, silkier mouthfeel.
Syrup
Adds sweetness and helps the custard brown lightly in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake until set and lightly browned. Eggs keep setting as they cool, so underbaking leaves a runny center while overbaking can make the custard grainy or cracked. Look for a set edge with a slight wobble in the center.

Swap the sweet potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, milk, syrup, nutmeg. 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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