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Southern Sliced Sweet Potatoes

A baked casserole of sliced sweet potatoes layered with butter, sugar, nutmeg, cloves, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Southern Sliced Sweet Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Assemble

  1. Cover the bottom of a baking dish with slices of boiled sweet potatoes.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt, butter, nutmeg, and brown sugar.

  3. Add another layer of sweet potatoes and season again; repeat until the dish is full.

  4. Pour ½ cup of water over the top and add a pinch of cloves.

Bake

  1. Set in the oven at 350°F (175°C) for twenty to thirty minutes.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Sweet potato + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together414 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Sweet potato + clovetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together228 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

  4. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Sweet potato + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,151 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Boiled sweet potatoes
Form the bulk of the dish, softening into a tender, starchy body.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and caramelizes slightly on the surface during baking.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor through the layers.
Water
Creates steam in the dish, helping the potatoes heat through and stay moist.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  1. Sweet potatothe original
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Parsnipfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, nutmeg, sugar, clove. 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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