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Dessert

Sweet Potato Custard Pie

A custard pie made with baked sweet potatoes, butter, sugar, milk, eggs, nutmeg, cinnamon, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Custard Pie

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

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

  2. Line a pie dish with the pastry crust.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, combine the sifted sweet potatoes, butter, sugar, milk, and eggs.

  2. Add nutmeg, cinnamon, and brandy, and mix well.

  3. Pour the sweet potato mixture into the crust.

Bake

  1. Bake for 45-50 minutes or 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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Sweet potato + cinnamontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together539 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sweet potato + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together414 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet potatoes
Provide the main body and sweet flavor of the custard filling.
Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, giving the pie structure once baked.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing to a smooth, tender texture.
Milk
Supplies liquid that loosens the filling and helps it set into a custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the custard tender.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs set as they heat, and pulling the pie too early leaves a runny center, while overbaking can make the custard grainy or cracked. Checking for a set center near the end of the time matters.

“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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