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Sweet Potatos Stewed

A stew of sweet potatoes, ham, and chicken seasoned with pepper, sea salt, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sweet potato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,015 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Sweet Potatos Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and wipe the sweet potatoes. If large, cut them in half.

Layer and stew

  1. Place the sweet potatoes at the bottom of a stew pan.

  2. Layer the sliced boiled ham over the sweet potatoes.

  3. Add the cut-up chickens.

  4. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  5. Add a bundle of herbs.

  6. Pour in enough water to cover.

  7. Stew until everything is cooked through.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the herbs.

  2. Thicken the gravy.

  3. Pour it over the stew before serving.

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 + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,015 recipes

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

  2. Ham + chickentop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,497 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Sweet potato + chickentop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together320 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Ham + peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet potatoes
Form the bulk of the dish and soften into a tender base as they stew.
Boiled ham
Adds salty, savoury flavour to the stewing liquid and the finished dish.
Chickens
Provide the main protein, which becomes tender and flavourful as it stews in the liquid.

The step that matters

Stew until everything is cooked through. Chicken pieces must reach a safe internal temperature, while the sweet potatoes need to become fully tender. Uneven pieces or too-high heat can leave some parts undercooked or the stew dry, so keep the pot at a gentle simmer and check the thickest pieces.

Swap the sweet potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, chicken, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Sweet potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, chicken, pepper. 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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