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Dessert

Sweet Potato Pie

A pie made with sweet potatoes, butter, sugar, wine, allspice, and syrup, topped with a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Steam the sweet potatoes until fully cooked.

  2. Slice the cooked sweet potatoes.

  3. Combine butter, sugar, wine, allspice, and enough water to make 1½ pints of syrup in a saucepan.

  4. Boil the mixture briefly.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a deep pie pan with the pie crust.

  2. Bake the lined pie pan slightly.

  3. Layer sliced sweet potatoes in the pan.

  4. Pour some syrup over the layer.

  5. Add another layer of sweet potatoes.

  6. Pour the remaining syrup on top.

  7. Cover with the pie crust.

  8. Bake until golden.

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 + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sweet potato + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together105 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

  3. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Sweet potato + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,151 recipes

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

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, 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 bulk of the filling, giving body and a soft, tender texture when cooked.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the syrup a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps it thicken and brown as it bakes.
Wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the syrup.
Allspice
Provides warm, aromatic spice that flavours the syrup and filling.

The step that matters

Bake the lined pie pan slightly. Pre-baking the crust sets its base before the wet syrup and sweet potato layers go in, helping it stay crisp rather than soggy.

Swap the allspice

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sweet potato, butter, sugar, wine, 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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