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Dessert

Sweet Potato Pudding

A baked pudding made from sweet potatoes, eggs, butter, sugar, cream, lemon, brandy, and nutmeg.

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 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 potatoes

  1. Boil the sweet potatoes in their skins until tender.

  2. Peel the potatoes while hot and rub them through a colander.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, mix the warm potatoes with butter and sugar until well combined.

  2. Stir in the beaten eggs until light and frothy.

  3. Add the cream, lemon juice and rind, nutmeg, and brandy, mixing well.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a 3‑inch deep tin lined with puff pastry, without a top crust.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 20 to 30 minutes.

  3. Serve cold.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 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 potatoes
Form the bulk of the filling and give it a soft, starchy body.
Eggs
Bind the filling and help it set into a custard-like texture when baked.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender mouthfeel to the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and adds to its soft, moist texture.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, making the filling smoother and more tender.

The step that matters

Baking the filling until set. Eggs set as they heat, so the filling must bake long enough to firm up without overcooking. Too little time leaves it loose, while too much can make it dry or curdled.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sweet potato, egg, butter, sugar, cream, brandy, nutmeg. 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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