Name: Baked Sweet Potato and Apples
Ingredients: 4 medium-sized sweet potatoes; 4 medium-sized apples; 1½ cups sugar; ½ cup butter; ½ pint hot 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 ↓

Baked Sweet Potato and Apples

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Wash and peel the sweet potatoes, then slice them about ½ inch thick.
Pare and slice the apples in the same way.

Assemble and bake

In a baking dish, layer the sweet potatoes and apples alternately.
Sprinkle 1½ cups of sugar over the top and scatter ½ cup of butter on top.
Add ½ pint of hot water and bake at 300°F (150°C) for 1 hour.
Serve steaming hot.

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: Form the bulk of the dish and become tender and soft as they bake.
Apples: Add moisture and a fruity sweetness that contrasts with the starchy potatoes.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the top caramelise slightly as it bakes.
Butter: Adds richness and fat, helping the top brown and the dish taste rounded.