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Glazed Sweet Potatoes

Sweet potatoes glazed with a sugar‑butter syrup and baked until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sweet potato and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,151 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Glazed Sweet Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Wash and peel the sweet potatoes.

  2. Cut the sweet potatoes in half lengthwise and place them in cold water.

  3. Bring a pot of salted water to a boil.

  4. Add the potatoes to the boiling water and cook for 8 to 10 minutes.

  5. Drain the potatoes.

Make the syrup and glaze

  1. In a separate saucepan, combine sugar, water, and butter; boil for 3 minutes until a syrup forms.

  2. Dip each potato half into the syrup.

  3. Place the coated potato halves in a baking pan.

Bake and baste

  1. Bake for 15 minutes.

  2. Baste the potatoes 2 or 3 times with the remaining syrup during baking.

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 + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,151 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet potatoes
Provide the starchy base that softens when boiled and then caramelizes in the oven.
Granulated sugar
Dissolves into the syrup and caramelizes on the surface for sweetness and a glossy glaze.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the syrup, helping it coat the potatoes and add flavor.

The step that matters

Baste during baking. Brushing the potatoes with the remaining syrup while they bake builds up a glaze in layers. Adding it all at once would leave the coating thin and uneven.

Swap the sweet potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter. 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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