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Dessert

Southern Sweet Potato Pie

A pie made from mashed sweet potatoes, eggs, sugar, and a 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 dough

  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.

  5. Repeat this process 3-4 times.

  6. Chill the dough for 1 hour.

Make the filling

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

  2. In a bowl, combine the mashed sweet potatoes, eggs, sugar, and enough cream or milk to create a thin batter.

  3. Add nutmeg, cinnamon, and optional lemon or pineapple extract for flavor.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a pie dish with the puff paste.

  2. Pour the sweet potato mixture into the dish.

  3. Bake 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 and body of the filling, giving it a soft, smooth texture.
Eggs
Bind the filling and help it set into a sliceable custard when baked.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the earthy flavor of the sweet potatoes.
Sweet cream or milk
Thins the mixture into a pourable batter and adds richness and moisture.
Fresh butter
Creates layers in the puff paste through repeated folding, giving a flaky texture.
Flour
Forms the structure of the puff paste dough that holds the layers together.

The step that matters

Rolling and folding the puff paste. Butter must stay in cold, distinct layers between sheets of dough. If the dough gets warm or the butter melts into it, the layers blend and the crust turns dense instead of flaky. Chilling between rounds helps keep the butter firm.

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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