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Sweet Potato Pudding

A baked sweet potato pudding made with grated sweet potatoes, sugar, eggs, butter, and nutmeg or spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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

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 the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat the sugar into the eggs until very light.

  2. Mix in the grated sweet potatoes and melted butter.

  3. Add nutmeg or spices to taste.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into an earthen dish and bake for about 1.5 hours.

  2. Serve with hard sauce.

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. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Sweet potato + sugartop 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. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and set it into a custard-like pudding as they bake.
Sweet potatoes
Provide the bulk, starch and moisture that give the pudding its body.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the eggs whip to a light, airy base.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a softer, more tender texture.

The step that matters

Beating the sugar into the eggs until very light. Beating dissolves the sugar and traps air in the eggs, giving the pudding lightness. Under-beaten eggs leave a denser, heavier result.

Swap the sweet potato

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

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

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