Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
Sweet Potato Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare
Grate the sweet potatoes and immediately add them to the milk to prevent discoloration.
Make the batter
Mix in the sugar, butter, flour, and allspice to create a very thin batter.
Melt the butter and stir it into the mixture thoroughly.
Bake
Pour the batter into a baking dish and bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for two hours.
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.
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Butter + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Sweet potato + allspicetop 7% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together105 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).
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Flour + sweet potatotop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together627 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + allspicetop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,302 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
- Sweet potatoes
- Provide the main body and starch that give the pudding its soft, dense texture.
- Eggs
- Help the pudding set as it bakes, giving it structure.
- Milk
- Adds moisture and liquid so the batter bakes into a custard-like pudding.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps with browning on the surface.
- Butter
- Adds fat for richness and a smooth, tender texture.
- Flour
- Thickens the batter slightly to help it hold together while baking.
The step that matters
Grate the sweet potatoes and add them to the milk right away. Cut sweet potato surfaces darken quickly when exposed to air. Adding them to milk immediately limits this discoloration, keeping the pudding a pleasant color.
Swap the allspice
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, butter, milk, flour, sweet potato):
- Cinnamonfits better
- Nutmegfits better
- Capersfits better
- Allspicethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, butter, milk, flour, sweet potato. 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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