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Sweet Potato Pir

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sweet potato and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 228 recipes. Both carry ethyl benzoate, which smells fruity, sweet. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Pir

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Parboil the sweet potatoes, then skin and cool them.

  2. Slice the potatoes crosswise.

  3. Line a pie dish with puff pastry.

  4. Layer the sliced sweet potatoes in the dish, sprinkling generously with sugar and scattering whole cloves.

  5. Cover with melted butter and juice.

  6. Seal the dish with puff pastry, ensuring it is neat.

  7. Bake until golden brown.

  8. Serve warm.

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 + clovetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together228 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

  2. Sweet potato + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,151 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Clove + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,045 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sweet potato, sugar, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

More sweet potato pie recipes

Southern 5 See all 114 →

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