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Dessert

Southern Sweet Potato Pie

A baked pie with a sweet potato filling and puff pastry crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Southern Sweet Potato 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

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, combine the mashed sweet potatoes, eggs, sugar, sweet cream or milk, nutmeg, and cinnamon until smooth.

  3. If desired, add lemon or pineapple extract for flavor.

Make the puff paste

  1. Prepare the puff paste by rubbing the butter into the flour until crumbly.

  2. Mix in the spring water and knead the dough well.

  3. Let the dough rest for 15 minutes.

  4. Roll out the dough thinly, spread with butter, sprinkle with flour, fold, and roll again. Repeat this process 3-4 times.

  5. Chill the dough for 1 hour.

Bake

  1. Line a pie dish with the puff paste, pour in the sweet potato mixture, and bake without a top until set.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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 of the filling and its soft, creamy body.
Eggs
Set the mashed filling into a sliceable custard as they cook.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the filling its smooth texture.
Butter
Creates flaky layers in the puff paste as it melts and steams during baking.
Flour
Forms the structure of the puff paste dough that holds the layers together.

The step that matters

Baking without a top until set. Eggs set through gentle heat; if the oven is too hot the filling can puff, crack, or curdle before the centre firms, so check for a set centre rather than relying on time alone.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sweet potato, egg, sugar, cream, nutmeg, cinnamon, flour):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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