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Sweet Potatoes a LA Creole

A baked sweet potato dish topped with butter, brown sugar, and breadcrumb mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Sweet Potatoes a LA Creole

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Peel the sweet potatoes and cut them in half lengthwise.

  2. Place the potatoes in a deep baking dish.

Bake

  1. Cover the potatoes with milk.

  2. Add the salt, butter, and brown sugar.

  3. Wet the bread crumbs with the beaten egg and cover the potatoes with this mixture.

  4. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for about an hour.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sweet potato + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together67 recipes

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

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 soft and tender as they bake.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness so the potatoes stay tender in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the topping brown lightly.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and caramel notes as it melts into the potatoes.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden topping when baked.
Egg
Binds the bread crumbs so they hold together as a topping.

Swap the sweet potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, sugar, bread, 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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