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Sweet-potatoes

Sweet potatoes baked, boiled, or steamed, served with butter and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sweet potato and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,151 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Sweet-potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Bake whole

  1. Bake sweet potatoes with skins on for 1 hour.

  2. Serve with butter on the table.

Boil or steam and layer

  1. Alternatively, boil or steam sweet potatoes until nearly done.

  2. Peel and slice the sweet potatoes into ½ inch thick pieces.

  3. Layer the slices in a baking dish.

  4. Add bits of butter.

  5. Use ¼ pound of butter for a half-gallon dish.

  6. Sprinkle 2 tablespoons of granulated sugar on top before baking.

Simpler option

  1. For a simpler option, serve boiled or steamed sweet potatoes with melted butter poured over them.

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 + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,151 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sweet potato + buttertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,491 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, 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 dish, softening to a tender, starchy texture when cooked.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, melting into the potatoes as they cook.
Granulated white sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown lightly in the oven.

Swap the sweet potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar. 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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