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Sweet Potato Cream Toast

A toast topped with mashed sweet potato, butter, salt, egg white, and mushrooms, baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Cream Toast

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the topping

  1. Rice the boiled sweet potatoes and mix with melted butter and coarse sea salt without mashing.

Assemble and bake

  1. Heap the mixture onto rounds of hot buttered toast.

  2. Cover each slice with beaten egg white mixed with a little salt and chopped mushrooms.

  3. Brown quickly in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately on a hot platter.

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. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Sweet potato + mushroomtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together72 recipes

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

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Egg + mushroomtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,987 recipes

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

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 of the soft, moist filling that forms the topping.
Egg white
Beaten to stiff foam, it sets in the oven to form a light, crisp-topped layer.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the mashed potato mixture and helps it brown.

The step that matters

Brown quickly in a 400°F (200°C) oven. Egg white must be stiffly beaten and baked only until set and lightly browned. Overbaking dries the foam and toughens it, while underbaking leaves it runny.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Sweet potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, mushroom. 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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