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Baked Sweet Potatoes

Baked sweet potatoes with sugar, butter, water, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Baked Sweet Potatoes

Why it works: Sugar and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,806 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Baked Sweet Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Steam the sweet potatoes in their skins or cook in boiling water until half done.

  2. Peel and slice the sweet potatoes into ½-inch thick slices.

Layer and bake

  1. Layer the slices in a baking dish, sprinkling with sugar and bits of butter between layers.

  2. Cover the top layer with sugar and bits of butter.

  3. Pour in ½ cup of water and vinegar.

  4. Bake uncovered at 400°F (200°C) for 30 minutes, then uncover to brown.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  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. Sweet potato + vinegartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together181 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet potatoes
Form the bulk of the dish, softening into tender layers as their starch cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and browns on the surface in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the potatoes stay moist and flavorful as they bake.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the sugar and potatoes.

The step that matters

Cook the sweet potatoes until half done before layering. Partly cooking the potatoes first lets their starch begin to soften so they finish tender in the oven without staying raw in the centre or breaking apart while baking.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Sweet potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, vinegar. 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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