Why it works: Sweet potato and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 539 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓
Sweet Potato Pie
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Boil the sweet potatoes until nearly done.
Line a pie tin with the crust.
Assemble
Slice the potatoes and layer them in the crust.
Add bits of butter and sprinkle with sugar and ground cinnamon.
Cover with the upper crust.
Bake
Bake until hot.
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.
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Sweet potato + cinnamontop 2% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together539 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together30,779 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Butter + cinnamontop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together17,784 recipes
Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).
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Sweet potato + sugartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,151 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together98,233 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Sweet potatoes
- Form the soft, starchy filling that sets into the body of the pie.
- Butter
- Adds richness and moisture, melting into the filling as it bakes.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps the filling taste rounded and caramelised at the edges.
- Ground cinnamon
- Adds warm aromatic flavour that complements the sweet potatoes.
The step that matters
Boil the sweet potatoes until nearly done. Potatoes that are fully cooked before baking can turn mushy, while undercooked ones stay firm and starchy. Stopping just short of done lets them finish gently in the oven and hold their shape when sliced.
“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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