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Dessert

Candied Yams

Candied Yams are yams baked and glazed with orange marmalade, brown sugar, sherry, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Yam and orange work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Candied Yams

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Bake the yams until tender.

  2. Slice the baked yams and place them in a casserole dish.

Glaze and bake

  1. Heat the orange marmalade, brown sugar, sherry, and butter together until melted.

  2. Pour the heated mixture over the sliced yams.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 20 to 25 minutes.

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. Yam + orangetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Orange + sherrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together823 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Sherry + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Yam + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together73 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Yams
Provide the tender, starchy body of the dish that soaks up the glaze.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and thickens into a syrupy glaze that caramelizes in the oven.
Orange marmalade
Adds sweetness, fruit acidity, and a bright citrus aroma to the glaze.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the glaze turn glossy and smooth.
Sherry
Adds depth and aroma to the glaze as its alcohol cooks off.

The step that matters

Melt the glaze completely before pouring. Heating the marmalade, brown sugar, sherry, and butter until fully melted and smooth dissolves the sugar evenly. Undissolved sugar can leave a grainy glaze that does not coat the yams or caramelize evenly in the oven.

Swap the yam

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, sugar, sherry, butter):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Yamthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, sugar, sherry, butter. 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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