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Sweet Potatoes En Casserole

A casserole of sliced sweet potatoes layered with maple sugar, butter, and sea salt, baked until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and sweet potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,151 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Sweet Potatoes En Casserole

Oven, in the book's wordsThe hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “the hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the casserole dish.

  2. Add the grated maple sugar and butter to the dish. Melt the butter, then layer the sliced sweet potatoes to cover the bottom.

  3. Dust with coarse sea salt and add another layer of sweet potatoes loosely.

  4. Pour ½ cup of boiling water over the potatoes.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover and bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C).

  2. After 15 minutes, lift the lower layer of potatoes to the top.

  3. Continue cooking until the potatoes are tender, then serve.

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. Sugar + sweet potatotop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,151 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Butter + sweet potatotop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,491 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet potatoes
Form the main body of the dish and become soft and tender when baked.
Maple sugar or dark brown sugar
Adds sweetness and caramel-like flavor as it melts into the cooking liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that helps the sugar melt and coat the potatoes.

The step that matters

Lift the lower layer of potatoes to the top. Potatoes at the bottom sit in the sweet syrup and can overcook or scorch, while top layers stay drier. Moving them up evens out the texture and browning across the dish.

Swap the sweet potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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