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Dessert

A Nice Way of Cooking Sweet Potatoes

Sweet potato slices are boiled, coated in egg and crackers, fried, and served with drawn butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

A Nice Way of Cooking Sweet Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil sweet potatoes until soft.

  2. Slice the sweet potatoes.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip the slices in the beaten egg.

  2. Coat the slices in finely rolled crackers.

  3. Fry in butter until brown.

Finish

  1. Pour drawn butter over the fried sweet potatoes.

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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Sweet potato + buttertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,491 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Sweet potato + eggtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together843 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, softened by boiling and then sliced.
Beaten egg
Acts as a binder so the cracker coating sticks to the slices.
Crackers
Form a crisp crumb coating that browns when fried.
Butter
Conducts heat for frying and adds richness and browning to the crust.
Drawn butter
Adds extra richness and a buttery aroma over the finished slices.

The step that matters

Frying in butter until brown. Butter contains milk solids that brown and can burn quickly over high heat. Moderate heat lets the coating turn golden and crisp while the sweet potato warms through.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Sweet potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, 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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