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Dessert

Sweet Potatoes Au Caramel

Caramelized sweet potatoes baked with flour, cinnamon, butter, sugar, and hot water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sweet potato and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 539 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Sweet Potatoes Au Caramel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the potatoes into long strips.

  2. Lay them in a baking dish suitable for serving.

Season and bake

  1. Dredge the potatoes with flour and cinnamon.

  2. Dot with butter cut into small pieces.

  3. Sprinkle with sugar and pour hot water over all.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 the dish, becoming tender as they cook through.
Flour
Coats the potatoes and helps thicken the juices around them.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the surface brown during baking.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and caramelizes on the surface as it bakes.

The step that matters

Bake until brown. Sugar and butter caramelize only at sufficient heat over time, so the surface can look pale or the sugar can scorch if the oven or timing is off. Watch the color rather than the clock.

Swap the sweet potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, cinnamon, butter, sugar):

  1. Arrowrootfits about as well
  2. Sweet potatothe original
  3. Shallotfits less well
  4. Parsnipfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, cinnamon, butter, sugar. 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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