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Dessert

Candied Sweet Potatoes

Candied sweet potatoes are baked in skins, sliced, layered with sugar, butter, cinnamon, and water until light brown.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sweet potato and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 539 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Candied Sweet Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Bake sweet potatoes in their skins until done.

  2. Peel and slice the sweet potatoes.

Layer and bake

  1. Cover the bottom of a baking dish with a layer of sweet potatoes, then sprinkle sugar and butter over the first layer.

  2. Add another layer of sweet potatoes and repeat with sugar and butter.

  3. Sprinkle a little cinnamon on top.

  4. Pour in ½ cup of cold water.

  5. Bake until light 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.

  1. Sweet potato + cinnamontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together539 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Butter + cinnamontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  4. Sweet potato + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,151 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Form the bulk of the dish, becoming tender and soft as they bake.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top caramelize and brown in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor through the layers.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aroma and flavor that complements the sweetness.

The step that matters

Bake until light brown. Sugar browns and caramelizes only with sustained oven heat, so stopping early leaves the top pale and the syrup thin. Watch for color rather than relying only on time.

“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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