Name: Sweet Potatoes and Apples
Ingredients: sweet potatoes; apples; 2 tablespoons brown sugar; 1 teaspoon butter; ½ cup water

Why it works: Sweet potato and apple work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 133 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Sweet Potatoes and Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Boil the sweet potatoes until tender.
Slice the sweet potatoes lengthwise.

Layer and bake

In a baking dish, make alternate layers of sliced apples and sweet potatoes.
Sprinkle each layer with brown sugar and small pieces of butter.
Pour ½ cup of water over the layers.
Bake until the apples are tender and the top is golden brown.

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.

Sweet potato + appletop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together133 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,706 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Sweet potato + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,151 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together16,478 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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 main body and soft, starchy texture of the bake.
Apples: Soften during baking to add moisture and a fruity, tender layer.
Brown sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the top brown as it caramelises in the oven.
Butter: Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and helps the top brown.