Name: Sweet Potatoes Mashed and Browned
Ingredients: three sweet potatoes of medium size until done; salt; pepper

Why it works: Sweet potato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,015 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Sweet Potatoes Mashed and Browned

Ingredients

three sweet potatoes of medium size until done
salt
pepper

Directions

Prepare the mash

Boil three medium sweet potatoes until done.
Peel and squeeze through a patent vegetable strainer.
Add a heaping tablespoonful of butter, salt, pepper to taste, and enough milk to make very soft.

Bake and serve

Put the mixture in a baking dish.
Dot it over with tiny bits of butter.
Bake until brown.
Serve in the dish in which it is baked.

Use leftovers

If any is left over, remove the thin brown skin, make the potato into small flat cakes and brown on both sides in a little butter in a spider.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

167Calories

4 gProtein

0 gFat

38 gCarbs

What these numbers assume: 3 portions

Ingredient	Portion assumed	kcal
Potato	1 medium (173g) baked	161
Black Pepper	1 tsp ground (2.3g)	6
Salt	1 tsp (6g)	0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Henrietta Latham Dwight. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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 + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,015 recipes

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

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 mash, giving body and a naturally sweet flavour.
Butter (in the method): Adds richness and fat, giving the mash a smooth, savoury mouthfeel and browning on top.
Milk (in the method): Adds moisture so the mash becomes very soft and spreadable.

“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.