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Dessert

Sweet Potato Pie

A baked pie with sliced sweet potatoes, spices, butter, sugar, molasses, and cream, topped with flour and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure. The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Assemble the pie

  1. Slice the parboiled sweet potatoes very thin and place them in a deep pie dish lined with pie crust.

  2. Sprinkle the potatoes with allspice, ginger, cloves, and nutmeg.

  3. Scatter small pieces of butter over the potatoes.

  4. Pour the sugar, molasses, and cream over the pie.

  5. Dust the top sparingly with flour and cover with hot water.

Bake

  1. Add the upper crust and bake for 45-50 minutes.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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 filling and set into a soft, tender custard-like body as they bake.
Molasses
Adds dark color, deep sweetness and a rich, slightly bitter flavor.
Cream
Adds fat and moisture, giving the filling a smooth, rich texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the filling brown lightly at the edges.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, melting through the filling as it bakes.

The step that matters

Slicing the sweet potatoes very thin. Thin, evenly sized slices cook through at the same rate as the custard sets. Thick pieces stay firm or hard in the centre while the outside overbakes.

Swap the sweet potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (allspice, ginger, clove, nutmeg, butter, sugar, molasses):

  1. Sweet potatothe original
  2. Carrotfits about as well
  3. Parsnipfits about as well
  4. Mustardfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against allspice, ginger, clove, nutmeg, butter, sugar, molasses. 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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