Skip to main content

Sweet Potato Pie

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Margaret Brown · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sweet potato and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 414 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Pie

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil 2 good-sized sweet potatoes, weighing about a pound; strain and mash through a sieve; 1 tablespoonful of butter must be put in them; sweeten to taste; 1 pint of boiling milk, 5 yolks of eggs, must be well beaten into the potatoes; stir the hot milk in on them. Grate in a little lemon peel; nutmeg to taste; put in 1 teaspoonful essence of lemon; beat up the whites of eggs into the potatoes, make a puff paste, roll out and make pies without tops.

  2. Custard pies can be made in the same way, leaving out the potatoes.

  3. In lemon pies use same quantity of ingredients as above, using 3 lemons.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

514Calories
19 gProtein
26 gFat
54 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 6 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Potato1 medium (173g) baked161
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Lemonjuice of 1 lemon (48ml)12
Nutmeg1 tsp ground (2.2g)12

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

By Margaret Brown. 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.

  1. Sweet potato + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together414 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Lemon + sweet potatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together314 recipes

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

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

Swap the sweet potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, milk, lemon, egg, nutmeg):

  1. Asparagusfits about as well
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Sweet potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, lemon, egg, nutmeg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

More sweet potato pie recipes

Southern 5 See all 114 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesDeep-Fried Potato BallsDeep-Fried Potato Balls119 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes