Skip to main content
Dessert

Sweet Potato Pudding

A custard-like pudding made from boiled sweet potato, sugar, butter, eggs, and spices, baked in pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil the sweet potato.

  2. Peel the sweet potato.

  3. Rub the sweet potato through a colander.

  4. Stir in the sugar and butter.

  5. Set aside to cool.

  6. Add the beaten eggs and flavorings.

Bake and serve

  1. Line deep pie plates with puff pastry.

  2. Pour the mixture into the pastry-lined plates.

  3. Bake until set in the center.

  4. Spread a thin layer of quince marmalade or thin slices of citron over the top.

  5. Sprinkle thickly with granulated sugar.

  6. Serve.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Cream + sugartop 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
Forms the bulk of the filling and gives it body and a soft, smooth texture.
Eggs
Bind the filling and set when baked, giving the pudding its firm structure.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing to a tender, smooth texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps give the top a browned, crisp finish.
Sweet cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the filling and making it smoother.

The step that matters

Bake until set in the center. Eggs set as they heat, so the pudding should be baked only until the center firms. Overbaking can make the custard-like filling grainy, dry, or cracked.

Swap the sweet potato

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

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

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

More sweet potato pudding recipes

Carolina 3 See all 116 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesDeep-Fried Potato BallsDeep-Fried Potato Balls119 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes