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Mashed Sweet Potatoes

Mashed sweet potatoes are boiled, mashed, seasoned, and baked with butter and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Mashed Sweet Potatoes

Oven, in the book's wordsA good oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a good oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Boil the sweet potatoes in salted water for 40 minutes.

  2. Drain, peel, and press through a sieve into a baking dish.

Season and bake

  1. Season with salt, pepper, butter, and hot milk.

  2. Beat well and smooth the top.

  3. Glaze with melted butter and bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 15 minutes, or until brown.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Sweet potato + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,015 recipes

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

  3. Sweet potato + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together596 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  4. Sweet potato + buttertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,491 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet potatoes
Form the main body of the dish, giving a soft, starchy mash once cooked and pressed.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth texture, and helps the top brown when glazed.
Milk
Adds moisture so the mash becomes smooth and spoonable rather than stiff.

The step that matters

Pressing the potatoes through a sieve. Pressing the hot, cooked potatoes through a sieve breaks down the starch cells evenly, producing a smooth mash without lumps. Letting them cool or pushing them unevenly leaves a coarse, dense texture.

Swap the sweet potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, butter, milk):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Sweet potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, milk. 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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