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Sweet Potatoes

A baked sweet potato dish with butter, sugar, breadcrumbs, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Sweet Potatoes

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the potatoes and slice them while hot.

  2. Butter a dish and add a layer of potatoes.

Assemble

  1. Sprinkle with sugar, coarse sea salt, black pepper, and dots of butter.

  2. Add fine bread crumbs on top.

  3. Ensure the last layer is well buttered crumbs.

  4. Pour in 4 tablespoons of warm water.

  5. Cover the dish.

Bake and brown

  1. Bake for 30 minutes.

  2. Remove the cover.

  3. Brown the top.

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

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

  2. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  4. Potato + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together434 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 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

Potatoes
Form the bulk of the dish, providing starch that softens into a tender layered texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the top crumbs brown in the oven.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top caramelise and brown.
Fine bread crumbs
Form a crisp topping that browns and protects the layers beneath.

The step that matters

Remove the cover. Keeping the dish covered traps steam so the potatoes cook through. Uncovering it then lets the surface dry and brown, so the top only crisps if the cover comes off in time.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatothe original
  3. Sweet potatofits about as well
  4. Tomatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, pepper, bread. 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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