Skip to main content
Main

Sweet Potato Balls

Sweet potato balls are fried balls made from riced sweet potatoes, butter, salt, pepper, milk, egg, flour, and oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. In a bowl, combine hot riced sweet potatoes, butter, salt, pepper, and enough hot milk to moisten.

  2. Add the beaten egg and mix well.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into small balls.

  2. Roll each ball in flour.

  3. Fry the balls in deep hot oil until golden brown.

  4. Drain on paper towels before serving.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Sweet potato + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together627 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sweet potato + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 bulk and soft, moist body of the balls.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.
Hot milk
Adds moisture so the mixture can be shaped without crumbling.
Beaten egg
Binds the mixture so the balls hold their shape.
Flour
Forms a coating that helps the outside brown and crisp when fried.

The step that matters

Fry in deep hot oil until golden brown. Oil that is hot enough seals the flour coating quickly, so the balls brown and crisp rather than soaking up grease. Oil that is too cool lets the balls absorb oil and turn heavy, while oil that is too hot browns the outside before the center heats through.

Swap the sweet potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, milk, egg, flour. 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.

You might also like

Sweet Potato CroquettesSweet Potato Croquettes53 recipesPotato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesRoasted Sweet PotatoesRoasted Sweet Potatoes62 recipes