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Dessert

Caramelized Sweet Potatoes

Sweet potatoes caramelized with brown sugar, butter, cinnamon, and salt, baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sweet potato and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 539 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Caramelized Sweet Potatoes

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil the sweet potatoes in 2 quarts of hot water until tender.

  2. Peel the potatoes and arrange them in a shallow baking dish.

Make the sauce and bake

  1. Boil 1 cup of water and brown sugar together for 10 minutes.

  2. Sprinkle salt and cinnamon over the potatoes and add the butter to the sauce.

  3. Pour the sauce over the potatoes and bake at 350°F (175°C) until nicely browned.

  4. Serve in the dish in which they were baked.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Butter + cinnamontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  4. Sweet potato + sugartop 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).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Provide the soft, starchy body of the dish that the sauce coats.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and, as it heats, caramelizes and thickens the sauce into a glaze.
Butter
Adds fat for a richer flavor and a glossier finish on the sauce.

The step that matters

Bake until nicely browned. Sugar caramelizes as it heats, so the glaze needs enough time in the oven to darken and thicken. Pull it too early and the sauce stays thin and pale; leave it too long and the sugar can scorch.

“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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