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Glazed Sweet Potatoes

Glazed Sweet Potatoes are boiled potatoes coated in a sugar‑butter syrup and baked until caramelized.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,456 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Glazed Sweet Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Wash and peel the potatoes.

  2. Cook the potatoes in boiling salted water for 10 minutes.

  3. Drain the potatoes.

  4. Cut them in half lengthwise.

  5. Place them in a buttered pan.

Make the syrup

  1. Make a syrup by boiling the sugar and water for 3 minutes.

  2. Add the butter to the syrup.

Glaze and bake

  1. Brush the potatoes with the syrup.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 15 minutes, basting twice with the remaining syrup.

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

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

  2. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Potato + sugartop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,032 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the main body of the dish and soften into a tender interior when parboiled and baked.
Sugar
Dissolves into the syrup to sweeten and caramelize into a glossy glaze on the potatoes.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the syrup, helping it coat the potatoes and brown.

The step that matters

Basting with the remaining syrup. Sugar in the syrup browns and thickens as it bakes, so it can scorch if left too long. Basting twice keeps the surface moist and builds an even, glossy glaze rather than a dry or burnt coating.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter. 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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