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Dessert

Sweet Potatoes

A baked sweet potato casserole with apple sauce, raisins, and marshmallow cream topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Sweet Potatoes

Why it works: Sauce and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,787 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Sweet Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Bake sweet potatoes until tender.

  2. Peel sweet potatoes and place them in a bowl.

  3. Add an equal quantity of apple sauce to the bowl.

  4. Mash sweet potatoes and apple sauce together until well combined.

  5. Stir in a handful of small sweet seedless raisins.

Assemble and bake

  1. Transfer mixture to a casserole dish.

  2. Spread ½ cup marshmallow cream on top.

  3. Bake until heated through and 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sweet potato + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together19 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sweet potato + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together133 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  4. Apple + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sweet potato + saucetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together165 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet potatoes
Provides the starchy, sweet base that gives the casserole its body.
Apple sauce
Adds moisture and mild sweetness, keeping the mashed base soft.
Small sweet seedless raisins
Adds chewy pockets of sweetness throughout the filling.
Marshmallow cream
Softens and browns on top, adding sweetness and a golden, slightly chewy crust.

The step that matters

Bake the sweet potatoes until fully tender. Starch in undercooked sweet potatoes stays firm and grainy, so mashing them with apple sauce leaves lumps and an uneven texture. Cooking them until soft lets the starch swell and break down into a smooth mash.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sweet potato, sauce, raisin, cream):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sweet potato, sauce, raisin, cream. 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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