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Dessert

Sweet Potato Cakes in Batter

Sweet potato slices battered and fried until cooked, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and rye match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,320 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Cakes in Batter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the sweet potatoes into ¼ inch slices (do not cook).

  2. Prepare a batter that is thicker than pancake batter, preferably using leftover pancake batter.

  3. Dip the sweet potato slices in the batter.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the battered slices in lard until cooked through.

  2. Serve hot.

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. Flour + ryetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,320 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sweet potato + ryetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Sweet potato + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together627 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Rye + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together918 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 each fritter, giving starchy sweetness and a soft, moist interior.
Flour
Forms the batter's structure and helps it cling to the slices.
Rye flour
Adds a more robust flavour and some structure to the batter.
Milk
Hydrates the flours and loosens the batter so it coats the slices.
Egg
Binds the batter so it holds together during frying.
Lard
Conducts heat to the batter, crisping and browning the outside of the fritters.

The step that matters

Fry the battered slices until cooked through. Raw sweet potato needs time to soften inside. If the outside browns too quickly, the centre can stay firm while the batter darkens.

Swap the sweet potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, rye, milk, egg):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Beetrootfits about as well
  3. Sweet potatothe original
  4. Chivefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, rye, milk, egg. 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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