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Dessert

Candied Yams

Candied yams are sweet potatoes cooked in a butter and corn syrup glaze with allspice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Yam and allspice share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Candied Yams

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the yams

  1. Peel and slice the yams as desired.

  2. Cook the yams in salted water until done, then drain.

Make the syrup and finish

  1. In a saucepan, mix water, butter, corn syrup, and allspice.

  2. Boil the mixture until it begins to thicken.

  3. Add the yams and cook slowly on the stove.

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 + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Yam + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Corn + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together200 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Corn + syruptop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,678 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Yams
Form the main body of the dish, softening as they cook in the syrup.
White corn syrup
Provides sweetness and a thick, glossy coating that clings to the yams.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the syrup a smoother, rounder flavour.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup until it begins to thicken. Sugar syrups thicken as water evaporates and concentration rises. Stopping too early leaves a thin sauce that will not coat the yams, while overcooking can make it stiff and sticky once cooled.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (yam, butter, corn, syrup):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against yam, butter, corn, syrup. 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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