Name: Cream of Sweet Potatoes, for Pies
Ingredients: 12 sweet potatoes; 2 eggs; 4 egg yolks; 6 ounces butter; ¼ teaspoon salt; ½ pound macaroons, ground into crumbs; 1⅓ cups sugar; 1/3 cup rum or lemon flavor

Why it works: Butter and rum are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,007 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cream of Sweet Potatoes, for Pies

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 sweet potatoes

Boil or steam the sweet potatoes until three-quarters done.
Transfer them to a pan and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until fully cooked.
Peel the cooked sweet potatoes and pass them through a colander.

Make the cream

Add the eggs, egg yolks, butter, salt, and macaroons to the sweet potatoes.
Flavor with rum or lemon, and sweeten with sugar. Mix everything together until well combined.

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.

Butter + rumtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,007 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Sugar + rumtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,908 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Sweet potato + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,151 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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: Form the main body of the cream and provide its starchy, smooth texture when pressed.
Eggs: Bind the mixture and help it set into a rich, custard-like texture.
Egg yolks: Add richness and smoothness, and help the cream hold together.
Butter: Adds fat for richness and a silky mouthfeel.
Macaroons: Add sweetness, almond aroma and body as ground crumbs.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and balances the earthy flavor of the potatoes.

The step that matters

Pass the cooked sweet potatoes through a colander. Pressing the potatoes while they are hot breaks them down into a smooth purée. Lumps left in the base will stay in the finished cream, so the texture depends on this step.

Swap the sweet potato

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

Sweet potatothe original
Capsicumfits about as well
Potatofits about as well
Asparagusfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, sugar, rum. 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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Cream of Sweet Potatoes, for Pies