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Dessert

Sweet Potato Pudding

A steamed sweet potato pudding with butter, sugar, lemon flavoring, egg yolks, mixed fruit, and folded egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Steam sweet potatoes until cooked, then peel and pound them through a fine colander.

Make the mixture

  1. Add butter, sugar, lemon flavoring, and egg yolks; mix well.

  2. Stir in mixed fruit.

  3. Once mixture is cold, gently fold in beaten egg whites.

  4. Pour mixture into buttered and floured small pudding molds.

Cook and serve

  1. Steam or bake molds as you would a Carolina cake.

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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sweet potato + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together314 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 soft, starchy body of the pudding.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, smooth texture.
Egg yolks
Enrich the mixture and help bind it as it sets.
Egg whites
Folded in beaten, they trap air that lightens the pudding.
Mixed fruit
Adds sweetness, moisture and fruity flavor throughout.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and adds to its soft texture.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Fold gently and only once the mixture is cold, so the whites keep their trapped air. Stirring hard or adding them to warm mixture deflates them and the pudding comes out dense.

Swap the sweet potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, lemon, egg, syrup. 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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