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Dessert

Sweet-potato Pie

A baked pie with a sweet potato filling, milk, cream, eggs, sugar, cinnamon, ginger, and a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Sweet-potato Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil the sweet potatoes in their skins until tender.

  2. Remove the skins and mash the potatoes until light.

  3. Mix in the milk, cream, eggs, sugar, and spices.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie crust.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until set.

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. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sweet potato + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together306 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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 starchy, earthy flavour of the filling.
Eggs
Set as they bake, firming the mashed filling into a sliceable pie.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the filling.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the mashed potato into a pourable custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the earthy flavour of the sweet potatoes.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Egg proteins firm as they heat, so the filling needs to reach a set point. Pulling it too early leaves a runny center, while overbaking can make it cracked or watery.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sweet potato, milk, cream, egg, sugar, cinnamon):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Allspicefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sweet potato, milk, cream, egg, sugar, cinnamon. 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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