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Boiled Sweet Potatoes. Patates Douces Bouillis.

Boiled sweet potatoes served with drawn butter sauce or buttered and briefly oven-baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Boiled Sweet Potatoes. Patates Douces Bouillis.

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the sweet potatoes thoroughly with a cloth or brush, removing all dirt.

  2. Clip the edges of the roots that adhere.

Boil and steam

  1. Boil the potatoes in a kettle of boiling water until easily pierced with a fork.

  2. Drain the water and set the kettle on the back of the stove. Cover and let the potatoes steam for about 5 minutes.

  3. Peel the potatoes.

Serve

  1. Slice the potatoes and spread butter over them. Place the buttered slices in the oven for a few seconds before serving hot.

  2. Serve with Drawn Butter Sauce.

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. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Sweet potato + saucetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together165 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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
Provide the starchy flesh that becomes soft and tender when boiled and steamed.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the sliced potatoes.

The step that matters

Boil until easily pierced with a fork. Sweet potatoes must be fully cooked through so the starch softens evenly. Underdone centers stay firm and grainy, while the potatoes can break apart if overcooked.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Onionfits better
  4. Sweet potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sauce. 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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