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Dessert

Sweet-potato Pudding

A baked sweet potato custard topped with preserved citron or quince marmalade, served with milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 the filling

  1. Boil the sweet potato until thoroughly done, then mash it finely.

  2. While the potato is hot, mix in the sugar and butter.

  3. Set the mixture aside to cool.

  4. Beat the eggs until light, then add them along with the nutmeg, lemon peel, and wine or brandy to the cooled mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Line tin plates with puff pastry and pour in the sweet potato mixture.

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

  3. Once baked, cover the top with thinly sliced preserved citron or quince marmalade.

  4. Sprinkle granulated sugar on top and serve with a glass of rich milk for each person.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Sweet potato + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together314 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet potato
Provides the bulk and body of the pudding once mashed smooth.
Eggs
Set during baking to bind the filling into a firm custard.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender texture to the filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown lightly in the oven.
Puff pastry
Forms a crisp, flaky base that holds the filling.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the eggs. Hot filling would begin to scramble the beaten eggs and make the texture grainy, so the mixture should cool first before the eggs go in.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Spinachfits about as well
  3. Arrowrootfits about as well
  4. Sweet potatothe original

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