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Dessert

Sweet-potato Pie

A baked pie with a sweet potato filling flavored with cinnamon, allspice, cloves, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Sweet-potato Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Mash the sweet potatoes or pass them through a ricer while hot.

  2. Add the salt, brown sugar, cinnamon, syrup, allspice, melted butter, beaten eggs, and enough milk to make a smooth batter that is not too thin.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake a single pie crust lightly, add the filling, and return to the oven until the crust is thoroughly baked.

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 + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sweet potato
Forms the body of the filling and gives it a dense, smooth texture.
Eggs
Set when baked, giving the filling structure so it firms into a sliceable pie.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter to a smooth, pourable consistency.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a caramel-like depth of flavour.
Syrup or molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture and a deeper, richer colour and flavour.

The step that matters

Bake the crust before adding the filling. A lightly pre-baked crust helps it stay crisp, while a fully baked crust keeps a wet custard-style filling from leaving the base soggy. Baking the filling through sets the eggs so the pie holds its shape.

Swap the sweet potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, sugar, cinnamon, syrup, allspice, egg, clove):

  1. Sweet potatothe original
  2. Arrowrootfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits less well
  4. Parsnipfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, cinnamon, syrup, allspice, egg, clove. 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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