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Dessert

Sweet Potato Pudding

A baked custard made with eggs, butter, sugar, sweet potato, and lemon.

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

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs until light.

  2. Add the butter and sugar, mixing until well combined.

  3. Incorporate enough sweet potato to thicken the mixture.

  4. Stir in the lemon juice and grated peel.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake 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. Sugar + sweet potatotop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,151 recipes

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

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 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

Eggs
Set the pudding into a firm, sliceable custard as they cook.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender, smooth texture to the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps soften the texture of the pudding.
Sweet potato
Thickens the mixture and adds body and moisture to the pudding.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the richness.

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 can make it dry and grainy.

Swap the sweet potato

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