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 Custaed Pie
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
Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Cream together the sugar and butter.
Mix the creamed mixture with the mashed sweet potato and add the sweet milk.
Flavor with nutmeg or cinnamon.
Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth and gently stir them into the mixture.
Bake
Pour the filling into a pie pan lined with crust.
Bake in the preheated oven until set.
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.
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Sweet potato + nutmegtop 4% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together414 recipes
Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together14,685 recipes
Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
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Sweet potato + milktop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together596 recipes
Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
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Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Mashed sweet potato
- Forms the body of the custard and gives it its moisture and flavor.
- Egg yolks
- Thicken the custard and help it set firm when baked.
- Egg whites
- Beaten to a froth, they add lightness and help the filling rise and set.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the filling and helps tenderize its texture.
- Butter
- Adds richness and a smooth, tender texture to the custard.
- Sweet milk
- Loosens the filling and adds creaminess as it sets.
The step that matters
Gently folding in the beaten egg whites. Stiff egg whites trap air that gives lightness, but vigorous stirring knocks that air out and deflates the filling. Folding gently keeps the airy structure so the custard sets light rather than dense.
Swap the sweet potato
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, sugar, butter, nutmeg):
- Sweet potatothe original
- Potatofits about as well
- Capsicumfits about as well
- Leekfits less well
Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar, butter, 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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