Name: Sweet Potatoes, Southern Style
Ingredients: cold baked or boiled sweet potatoes; butter; sugar; coarse sea salt

Why it works: Sweet potato and sugar 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, Southern Style

Ingredients

cold baked or boiled sweet potatoes
butter
sugar
coarse sea salt

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Cut the sweet potatoes into ¼-inch slices.
Layer the bottom of a baking dish with sweet potato slices.
Spread each layer thickly with butter and sprinkle with sugar and coarse sea salt.
Repeat layering, finishing with sugar on top.
Bake at 400°F (200°C) until heated through and slightly browned.

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.

Sweet potato + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,151 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Sweet potato + buttertop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,491 recipes

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