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Sweet Potato-Cashew Bake

"This dish has always been on our Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter menus. You can't go wrong with sweet potatoes that are cooked, sliced, and layered with brown sugar, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and cashews. The whole mixture is then baked and topped with mini marshmallows that brown at the end. Canned yams can be used instead of the sweet potatoes."

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Why it works: Sweet potato and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 539 recipes mention both. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

The recipe

12 servings
Prep25 min
Cook35 min

Ingredients

Contains: milk, tree nuts (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. Preheat the oven to 375°F (190°C) and grease a 9x13 inch baking dish.

  2. Boil the sweet potato slices in a pan of boiling water for 8 to 10 minutes until just tender, then drain well.

  3. Arrange half the sweet potato slices in the baking dish in an even layer.

  4. Mix the brown sugar, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and salt in a small bowl, then sprinkle half over the potatoes.

  5. Dot with half the butter pieces, then top with the remaining sweet potatoes, remaining sugar mixture and remaining butter.

  6. Bake uncovered for 20 minutes until the potatoes are heated through and the sugar has melted into a syrup.

  7. Scatter the chopped cashews and miniature marshmallows evenly over the top.

  8. Bake for another 5 to 8 minutes until the marshmallows are puffed and golden, then serve warm.

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 + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together539 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Ginger + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Sweet potato + gingertop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together306 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the ginger

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

  1. Cardamomabout as good a flavor fit
  2. Cloveabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Allspiceabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against sweet potato, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, butter. 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).