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Dessert

Sweet Potato Pudding

A baked pudding made from sweet potatoes, eggs, sugar, butter, nutmeg, lemon peel, and brandy, served in pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil the sweet potatoes until very tender.

  2. While hot, rub the potatoes through a colander.

  3. In a bowl, combine the mashed sweet potatoes with the beaten eggs, powdered sugar, butter, nutmeg, lemon peel, and brandy.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the pastry in a dish.

  2. Pour the mixture over the pastry.

  3. Bake until the pudding is set and lightly browned.

  4. Sprinkle the top with additional nutmeg before serving.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Nutmeg + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,311 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sweet potatoes
Form the bulk of the pudding, giving body, sweetness and a soft, moist texture.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set it into a firm custard-like texture when baked.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing tenderness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown lightly during baking.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour to the filling.

The step that matters

Rub the potatoes through a colander while hot. Hot potatoes break down into a smooth, lump-free purée that blends evenly with the eggs and butter. Cooling first makes them stiffer and harder to press through, leaving a grainy texture.

Swap the sweet potato

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

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

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