Why it works: Sweet potato and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 314 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Sweet-potato Pie
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare the filling
Scrape and clean the sweet potatoes, then boil until tender.
Rub the boiled potatoes through a colander.
Beat the yolks of the eggs until light. Stir in the sweet milk and the potatoes.
Add sugar, salt, and lemon flavoring. Pour the mixture into a pie crust.
Bake and top with meringue
Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.
Beat the egg whites. Add powdered sugar to the egg whites.
Spread the meringue over the pie. Brown the meringue in the oven for a few seconds.
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.
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Sweet potato + lemontop 10% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together314 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together19,053 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Sweet potato + milktop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together596 recipes
Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
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Sweet potato + sugartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,151 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
- Form the body of the filling, giving it its smooth, thick texture and sweet flavor.
- Egg yolks
- Thicken the filling as it bakes and help it set into a sliceable custard.
- Sweet milk
- Adds moisture and richness, loosening the potato into a pourable filling.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the filling and balances the lemon flavoring.
- Egg whites
- Whipped with powdered sugar to form a light meringue topping that browns on the surface.
The step that matters
Bake until set. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, so underbaking leaves the filling runny, while overbaking can make it weep or crack. Check that the centre barely jiggles before removing it.
Swap the sweet potato
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, milk, sugar, lemon):
- Asparagusfits about as well
- Arrowrootfits about as well
- Sweet potatothe original
- Capsicumfits about as well
Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, sugar, lemon. 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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