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Dessert

Sweet Potato Pie

A baked pie with sweet potato filling, butter, sugar, sweet milk, eggs, and a pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil the sweet potatoes until tender, then mash them with the butter.

  2. Mix in the sugar and sweet milk until well combined.

  3. Break in the eggs and stir thoroughly.

Assemble the pies

  1. Prepare a pie crust and pour the mixture into it.

  2. Repeat for a second pie.

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

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

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

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

  3. Sweet potato + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,151 recipes

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

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sweet potatoes
Provide the starchy, sweet body that makes up most of the pie filling.
Eggs
Bind the filling and help it set into a firm, sliceable custard when baked.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the earthy flavor of the sweet potatoes.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the mashed filling.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and loosens the mash into a pourable custard-like filling.

The step that matters

Stir in the eggs thoroughly. Eggs must be fully blended into the warm mash so the filling sets evenly. Unmixed egg can leave streaks or pockets that stay runny or curdle during baking.

Swap the sweet potato

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

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

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