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Dessert

Candied Sweet Potatoes

Candied Sweet Potatoes are sweet potatoes cooked in a brown sugar, butter, and water syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Candied Sweet Potatoes

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Parboil the sweet potatoes until tender.

  2. Peel and cut each potato lengthwise into eight pieces.

  3. Place the potato pieces in a baking dish.

Make the syrup and bake

  1. In a saucepan, combine brown sugar, butter, and water; boil for 10 minutes.

  2. Pour the syrup over the potatoes.

  3. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 1 hour.

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. Sweet potato + sugartop 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. Sweet potato + buttertop 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
Provide the starchy body of the dish, softening during parboiling and baking.
Brown sugar
Sweetens the syrup and adds molasses flavor and deep color as it caramelizes.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the syrup coat the potatoes and turn glossy.
Water
Dissolves the sugar into a syrup that can be boiled down and poured over the potatoes.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup for 10 minutes. Boiling dissolves the sugar fully and concentrates the liquid so it thickens as it cooks, clinging to the potatoes instead of pooling in 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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