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Dessert

Sweet-potato Pudding

A baked sweet potato custard with lemon, orange, spices, sherry, brandy, butter, sugar, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. 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 the batter

  1. Peel and grate the sweet potatoes raw.

  2. Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  3. Beat the eggs in a separate bowl until well combined.

  4. Add the grated sweet potatoes, lemon juice and rind, orange juice, mace, cinnamon, sherry, salt, and brandy to the butter and sugar mixture.

  5. Mix in the beaten eggs until everything is well combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased baking dish.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until set and golden on top.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Orange + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Sweet potato + orangetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together191 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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 starch that give the pudding its dense, moist body.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set into a firm, custard-like structure as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender texture by carrying fat through the batter.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps it brown attractively on top.
Lemon
Adds bright acidity and aroma from the juice and rind.

The step that matters

Mix in the beaten eggs until everything is well combined. Eggs are the main setting agent. If they are not evenly distributed, some areas may set unevenly or stay wet while others become dense, so the batter should be fully blended before baking.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sweet potato, lemon, orange, cinnamon, sherry, sugar, butter):

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sweet potato, lemon, orange, cinnamon, sherry, sugar, 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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