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Sweet Potato Waffles

A waffle batter made with mashed sweet potato, butter, sugar, milk, and wheat flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sweet potato and wheat share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 59 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Waffles

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, mix the mashed sweet potato, butter, sugar, milk, and wheat flour until well combined.

  2. Preheat the waffle iron and pour the batter into it.

  3. Cook according to the waffle iron's instructions until golden 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.

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 + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together59 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Milk + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Wheat flour
Provides the structure that sets the batter into a crisp-edged waffle.
Milk
Adds moisture and hydrates the flour so the batter pours and cooks evenly.
Mashed sweet potato
Adds moisture, body, and natural sweetness to the batter.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness, and helps the surface brown.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the waffle develop a golden brown colour.

The step that matters

Cook until golden brown. Sugar and milk solids brown quickly, so the surface can scorch before the centre sets. Watch the colour and follow the waffle iron's instructions closely.

Swap the sweet potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, milk, wheat, 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.

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