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Dessert

Sweet Potato Pudding

A baked sweet potato pudding with egg yolks, sugar, cinnamon, vanilla, baking soda, milk, egg whites, and crushed macaroons or almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,514 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA fairly hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a fairly hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together the egg yolks and castor sugar.

  3. Gradually add the mashed sweet potatoes, ground cinnamon, vanilla essence, and baking soda dissolved in a little milk.

Make the pudding

  1. Whisk the egg whites to stiff peaks and gently fold them into the mixture.

  2. Add the crushed macaroons or chopped almonds and mix carefully.

  3. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold and bake for 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Turn out carefully and serve hot with vanilla custard or fruit syrup.

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 + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Cinnamon + vanillatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Vanilla + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Sweet potato + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together62 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whisked to stiff peaks, they trap air and give the pudding a light, risen structure.
Egg yolks
Enrich the batter and add richness and structure as they set in the oven.
Mashed sweet potatoes
Provide the bulk, moisture and sweet flavour of the pudding.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter's acidity to help it rise and lighten its crumb.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps create a tender texture when creamed with the yolks.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites beaten to stiff peaks hold a lot of air. Folding gently keeps that air in, so the pudding rises and stays light rather than dense.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  1. Sweet potatothe original
  2. Arrowrootfits about as well
  3. Beetrootfits less well
  4. Capsicumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, cinnamon, vanilla, milk, almond, butter. 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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