Skip to main content
Side

Sweet Potatoes Glaoes

Cold boiled sweet potatoes dipped in brown sugar syrup, floured, and fried in butter and drippings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sweet potato and flour work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 627 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sweet Potatoes Glaoes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the glaze

  1. Boil brown sugar and water until thick, then cool.

Coat the potatoes

  1. Peel and cut cold boiled sweet potatoes in half lengthwise.

  2. Dip sweet potatoes in melted sugar.

  3. Roll in flour.

Fry

  1. Fry in a mixture of hot butter and drippings until golden brown.

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 + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together627 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Sugar + sweet potatotop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,151 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Soft, starchy base that the sugar glaze and flour coating cling to.
Brown sugar
Melts and thickens into a sticky glaze, adding sweetness and gloss.
Flour
Forms a thin coating that helps the outside crisp and brown when fried.
Butter
Fat that carries heat evenly and adds flavor and golden browning.
Drippings
Animal fat that adds savory flavor and promotes browning in the pan.

The step that matters

Boil the sugar and water until thick. Sugar syrup thickens as water evaporates and concentration rises. Too little boiling leaves a runny glaze that will not cling, while overboiling makes it hard and brittle once cooled.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits about as well
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Sweet potatothe original
  4. Leekfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, butter. 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.

You might also like

Eggplant CakesEggplant Cakes34 recipesEscalloped Tomatoes (Scalloped Tomatoes)Escalloped Tomatoes (Scalloped Tomatoes)25 recipesParsnip CroquettesParsnip Croquettes12 recipesOnion PuddingOnion Pudding9 recipes