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Nut and Sweet Potato Loaf

A loaf made from mashed sweet potatoes, walnuts, butter, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sweet potato and walnut share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 70 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Nut and Sweet Potato Loaf

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate 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, then peel and mash them.

Shape and bake

  1. Add the chopped walnuts, butter, and seeded raisins to the mashed potatoes.

  2. Shape the mixture into a loaf.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 20 minutes.

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 + walnuttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together70 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Sweet potato + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together19 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Walnut + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. 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 bulk and moisture that hold the loaf together.
Walnuts
Add crunch and a toasty, nutty contrast to the soft mash.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the loaf a softer, more tender texture.
Raisins
Add pockets of sweetness and chewy texture throughout the loaf.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sweet potato, walnut, 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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