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Dessert

Sweet Potato Custard

A custard made with boiled sweet potatoes, sweet milk, eggs, sugar, nutmeg, and butter, baked in a pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil the sweet potatoes until a fork can easily slip into them.

  2. Sprinkle the potatoes very lightly with salt and add the butter.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the egg yolks and froth the egg whites separately.

  2. Mix the boiled potatoes, sweet milk, sugar, nutmeg, and beaten yolks.

  3. Fold in the frothed egg whites last.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a rich pie crust and bake.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Sweet potato + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together596 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Nutmeg + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 body of the custard as they break down into a smooth filling.
Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, giving it structure, and the whites add lightness when folded in.
Sweet milk
Supplies moisture and liquid that gives the custard its smooth, pourable texture.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the custard its browned, caramelized surface as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, contributing to a smooth texture and flavor.

The step that matters

Folding in the frothed egg whites. Egg whites hold air only while whipped, so they should be folded in gently and last. Overmixing deflates them, which makes the custard denser and less light.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  1. Sweet potatothe original
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Leekfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar, nutmeg, 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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