Skip to main content
Main

Sweet Potato Pudding

A baked sweet potato custard with milk, eggs, lemon, rose water, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sweet potato and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 539 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. 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 sweet potatoes

  1. Parboil the sweet potatoes until tender, then let them cool.

  2. Grate the cooled sweet potatoes finely.

Mix and bake

  1. In a bowl, combine the grated sweet potatoes, milk, beaten eggs, lemon peel and juice, rose water, and cinnamon.

  2. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven 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 + cinnamontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together539 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  5. Lemon + rosetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,174 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 starchy body that gives the pudding its substance.
Eggs
Set the mixture as they cook, giving the pudding its firm, sliceable structure.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the custard-like texture tender.
Lemon peel and juice
Adds bright acidity and aromatic oils that lift the sweet potato flavour.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs thicken as their proteins coagulate with heat. Pulling the pudding too early leaves it runny, while overbaking makes it dry and grainy.

Swap the sweet potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, lemon, rose, cinnamon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, lemon, rose, cinnamon. 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

Sweet Potato CroquettesSweet Potato Croquettes53 recipesPotato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipes