Why it works: Sweet potato and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,151 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Sweet Potatoes and Bacon
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.
Boil the sweet potatoes until tender, then peel them.
Roll each potato in brown sugar, then wrap it in a thin strip of bacon.
Secure each end of the bacon with a toothpick.
Place the wrapped potatoes in a pan and brown them well in a 400°F (200°C) oven, turning frequently.
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.
-
Sweet potato + sugartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,151 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
You might also like
Deep-Fried Potato Balls119 recipes
Orange Potato Bread80 recipes
Sweet Corn Pudding8 recipes
White Cake431 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.