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Dessert

Sweet Potato Ceoquettes

Sweet potato cakes made with butter, salt, cayenne, egg yolk, and sherry wine, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sweet potato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,015 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Ceoquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Cook the sweet potatoes and pass them through a potato ricer.

  2. Add butter, salt, cayenne, egg yolk, and sherry wine.

  3. Beat the mixture until very light.

Shape and coat

  1. Shape the mixture into small cakes.

  2. Dip each cake in breadcrumbs, then in beaten egg, then again in breadcrumbs.

Fry

  1. Fry the cakes in deep fat 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 + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,015 recipes

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

  2. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Pepper + sherrytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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 cakes, providing starch and moisture that hold their shape.
Egg yolk
Binds the mixture and adds richness so the cakes hold together when fried.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture in the mashed potato base.
Breadcrumbs (in the method)
Form a crisp outer crust that browns during frying.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture until very light. Beating incorporates air and evenly distributes the butter and yolk through the starchy potato, giving a lighter interior. Under-beating leaves the cakes dense and uneven.

Swap the sweet potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, butter, egg, sherry, wine):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Sweet potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, egg, sherry, wine. 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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