Skip to main content
Dessert

Sweet Potato Pudding

A baked sweet potato pudding made with butter, eggs, cream, sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. 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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together in a mixing bowl.

  2. Beat the eggs well and add them to the mashed sweet potatoes.

  3. Stir in the sugar, cream, nutmeg, ginger, and cinnamon.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake for 15 minutes.

  2. Serve with sauce.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Sweet potato + cinnamontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together539 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sweet potato + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together414 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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, moisture and soft body of the pudding.
Eggs
Set with heat to give the pudding its structure and firm texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, smooth crumb.
Heavy cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the pudding creamy.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown during baking.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aroma and spice flavour to the pudding.

The step that matters

Bake until just set. Eggs set as they heat, so the pudding turns firm and smooth when cooked through. Overbaking makes the custard tight, grainy and watery as the egg proteins squeeze out liquid.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Clovefits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

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

Ginger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesDeep-Fried Potato BallsDeep-Fried Potato Balls119 recipesGinger CakeGinger Cake93 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipes