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Puree of Sweet Potatoes

A smooth puree of boiled sweet potatoes mixed with milk, butter, and flour, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Puree of Sweet Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil the sweet potatoes until very tender, then remove the skins.

  2. Press the potatoes through a colander or potato ricer.

Make the puree

  1. In a double boiler, bring the milk to a boil.

  2. Rub the butter and flour together until smooth, then add to the boiling milk.

  3. Stir in the pressed sweet potatoes until thoroughly mixed.

  4. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Serve

  1. Serve with toasted crackers or croutons.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Provide the main body, sweetness and smooth texture of the puree.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the puree while contributing creaminess.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving a smoother mouthfeel.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the milk mixture so the puree holds together rather than running thin.

The step that matters

Rub the butter and flour together until smooth, then add to the boiling milk. Flour lumps form if the flour is added directly to hot liquid. Rubbing it with butter coats the starch granules so they disperse evenly and thicken the milk smoothly.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Sweet potatothe original

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