Skip to main content
Dessert

Sweet Potato Pudding

A custard-like pudding made from boiled sweet potatoes, butter, sugar, eggs, lemon peel, spices, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg 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 Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil the sweet potatoes until tender.

  2. Let the sweet potatoes cool completely.

  3. Grate the cooled sweet potatoes.

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Gradually add the egg yolks, lemon peel, cinnamon, nutmeg, and sweet milk to the mixture.

  3. Mix in a splash of brandy with the sweet potatoes (optional).

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites last.

  5. Grease a pudding dish.

  6. Line the dish with the pie crust.

  7. Pour the custard mixture into the lined dish.

Chill and serve

  1. Chill the pudding.

  2. Serve cold, with or without 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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

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

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 moist, sweet body of the pudding.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set into a smooth, tender texture.
Egg whites
Folded in last to add lightness and help the pudding rise and hold its airy texture.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender, fine texture when creamed with sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps create a smooth creamed base.
Sweet milk
Adds liquid to loosen the custard and contributes to its set.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites last. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the egg whites, which gives the pudding its light texture. Stirring or overmixing knocks out that air and makes the pudding dense.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sweet potato, butter, sugar, egg, cinnamon, nutmeg, milk. 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

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesDeep-Fried Potato BallsDeep-Fried Potato Balls119 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes