Skip to main content
Dessert

Sweet Potato Pie

A baked pie made with sweet potatoes, butter, sugar, spices, eggs, lemon, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil the sweet potatoes until tender, then mash them.

  2. In a bowl, cream the butter and sugar together.

  3. Add the egg yolks, cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon juice, and lemon rind to the mixture.

  4. Gradually beat in the mashed sweet potatoes until light and fluffy.

  5. Stir in the brandy.

  6. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie dish lined with pastry.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Sweet potato + cinnamontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together539 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sweet potato + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together414 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet potatoes
Provide the bulk, moisture and body of the filling once mashed.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a smooth, tender texture.
Eggs
Whites lighten the filling and yolks help it set firm when baked.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the creamed butter become light.
Lemon
Its juice adds acidity that brightens the flavor, and the rind adds aroma.
Brandy
Adds aromatic flavor and a warm depth to the filling.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the beaten egg whites. Folding keeps the air beaten into the egg whites, so the filling stays light instead of deflating. Stirring vigorously would knock out the air and make the pie denser.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sweet potato, butter, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, egg, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sweet potato, butter, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, egg, brandy. 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.

More sweet potato pie recipes

Southern 5 See all 114 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesDeep-Fried Potato BallsDeep-Fried Potato Balls119 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes