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Grilled Sweet Potatoes

"I don't really like the traditional sweet potato casserole, but my son loves sweet potatoes, so I try to come up with different ways to cook them. This spring I tried grilling them. These are now a favorite of mine and my sons."

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Why it works: Sweet potato and cumin work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 232 recipes mention both. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

The recipe

4 servings
Prep10 min
Cook20 min

Ingredients

Contains: milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Method written by CompKitchen from the ingredient list. Not the original author's method, not kitchen-tested.

  1. Heat a grill to medium-high heat, about 400°F (200°C), and lightly oil the grates.

  2. Place the cubed sweet potatoes in a bowl of boiling water for 4 minutes, then drain well and pat dry.

  3. Melt the butter in a small pan over low heat, then stir in the brown sugar, ground cumin, cayenne pepper, salt and pepper.

  4. Toss the warm sweet potato cubes with the spiced butter until evenly coated.

  5. Thread the cubes onto skewers or set them in a grill basket, leaving space between pieces.

  6. Grill for 12 to 15 minutes, turning every few minutes, until tender and browned on all sides.

  7. Brush any remaining spiced butter over the hot potatoes just before serving. Adjust cayenne to taste before serving.

By allrecipes. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Sweet potato + cumintop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together232 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  2. Cumin + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,382 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Sweet potato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,015 recipes

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

  4. Sweet potato + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,151 recipes

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

  5. Butter + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together98,096 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the cumin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sweet potato, butter, sugar, pepper):

  1. Cinnamonbetter flavor fit
  2. Nutmegbetter flavor fit
  3. Gingerbetter flavor fit
  4. Cuminthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sweet potato, butter, sugar, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).