Skip to main content
Dessert

Sweet Potato Pie

A baked pie filled with mashed sweet potatoes, sugar, milk, eggs, vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make and bake the pie

  1. In a bowl, mix the mashed sweet potatoes, sugar, milk, eggs, vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt until smooth.

  2. Pour the mixture into the pie crust.

  3. Bake for 45 minutes or until set.

Cool and serve

  1. Let cool before serving.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Vanilla + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sweet potato + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together414 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the filling and help it set firm when baked.
Mashed sweet potatoes
Provide the bulk, moisture and body of the filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the filling brown slightly as it bakes.
Milk
Adds moisture and creaminess to the filling.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs thicken as they heat, so the filling is ready when it no longer wobbles in the centre. Underbaking leaves a runny slice, while overbaking can make the eggs curdle and weep.

Swap the sweet potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, milk, egg, vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, egg, vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg. 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.

More sweet potato pie recipes

Southern 5 See all 114 →

You might also like

Deep-Fried Potato BallsDeep-Fried Potato Balls119 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipes