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Dessert

Carolina Sweet Potato Pudding

A baked sweet potato pudding with wine, brandy, allspice, and sugar, encased in pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sweet potato and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 105 recipes. Both carry ethyl benzoate, which smells fruity, sweet. The science ↓

Carolina Sweet Potato Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Slice the peeled sweet potatoes and place them in a saucepan with enough water to cover.

  2. Season with a little allspice, wine, brandy, and sugar to taste.

  3. Boil until the potatoes are soft.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a deep dish with puff or plain pastry.

  2. Pour the sweet potato mixture into the lined dish.

  3. Cover with a top pastry and bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

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 + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together105 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

  2. Wine + brandytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Sweet potato + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,151 recipes

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

  4. Allspice + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together931 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Brandy and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 set into a soft, sliceable custard-like texture when cooked.
Wine
Adds acidity and aromatic flavour to the filling.
Brandy
Adds aromatic depth and flavour to the filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness, balancing the wine and brandy.
Puff or plain pastry
Forms the crust that encloses the filling and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Boil until the potatoes are soft. Potatoes must be fully softened before baking, because starch only gelatinises and becomes tender when cooked through. Undercooked slices stay firm and do not blend into a cohesive filling.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sweet potato, wine, brandy, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sweet potato, wine, brandy, sugar. 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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