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Dessert

Sweet Potato Pie

A custard-like pie made with mashed sweet potatoes, butter, sugar, milk, eggs, nutmeg, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sweet potato and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 414 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil and mash the sweet potatoes, then pass them through a sieve.

  2. Warm the butter and milk together in a saucepan.

  3. In a large bowl, combine the warm butter and milk with the sweet potatoes, sugar, and egg yolks.

  4. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the mixture.

  5. Add nutmeg and brandy to taste.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and 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. Sweet potato + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together414 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

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

  3. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Nutmeg + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,311 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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 smooth, thick texture.
Eggs
Set the custard when baked, and the whipped whites add lightness and loft to the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing to a tender, smooth texture.
Milk
Adds moisture and liquid that bakes into a soft, creamy custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the filling brown lightly as it bakes.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Stiff whites hold air that gives the pie lift. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring hard deflates the whites and leaves a dense, heavy pie.

Swap the sweet potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, milk, egg, nutmeg, brandy. 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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