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Dessert

Sweet Potato Pudding

A baked pudding made from boiled sweet potatoes, butter, sugar, sweet milk, nutmeg, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

Prepare

  1. Boil and grate the sweet potatoes.

  2. In a bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.

Make the batter

  1. Add the sweet milk and grated nutmeg to the mixture.

  2. Beat the egg yolks and mix them in.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg whites last.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour into a baking dish and bake until set.

  2. Serve with a rich 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. Sweet potato + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together414 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Sweet potato + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together596 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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

Sweet potatoes
Provide the bulk and moist, starchy body of the pudding.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps trap air when creamed with butter.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind, while whipped whites lift and set the custard as it bakes.
Sweet milk
Adds liquid moisture that cooks into a soft, set pudding.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites last. Whites hold air that gives lightness. Folding gently with a spatula keeps that air in, while stirring hard would deflate the batter and leave the pudding dense.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  1. Sweet potatothe original
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Leekfits less well

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

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