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Stuffed Sweet Potatoes

A baked dish of sweet potato skins filled with a sweetened butter, cream, sugar, cinnamon, and sherry wine mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sweet potato and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 539 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Stuffed Sweet Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the sweet potatoes well and boil them until tender.

  2. Remove from heat, cut in half lengthwise, and scoop out most of the potato, leaving the skin intact.

Fill and brown

  1. Mash the scooped potato and season with butter, cream, sugar, cinnamon, and sherry wine to taste.

  2. Fill the potato skins with the mixture and place them in the oven to brown slightly.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet potatoes
Provide the starchy bulk that mashes smooth and forms the filling.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silky mouthfeel in the mash.
Cream
Adds moisture and makes the mashed filling smoother and softer.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the filling take on colour in the oven.
Cinnamon
Contributes warm aroma and flavour to the sweet potato filling.
Sherry wine
Adds aroma and a touch of acidity to balance the sweetness.

The step that matters

Scooping out the potato and keeping the skin intact. The skins act as the serving shells, so they must stay whole. Scooping too hard or too close to the skin tears them, and a torn shell cannot hold the filling. Leaving a thin layer of potato inside the skin keeps it sturdy.

Swap the sweet potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cream, sugar, cinnamon, sherry, wine. 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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