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Dessert

Sweet Potato Pie

A baked pie with a sweet potato filling, sugar, cream, butter, eggs, and optional lemon or nutmeg, in a pastry shell.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Pie

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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, combine the mashed sweet potatoes, sugar, cream, butter, and beaten eggs, then mix well and add lemon or nutmeg for flavor.

  2. Pour the mixture into a pastry shell.

Bake

  1. Bake until set and golden.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Sweet potato + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together314 recipes

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

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  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

Sweet potatoes
Provide the bulk and body of the filling, giving it its smooth, mashed texture.
Eggs
Bind the filling and set it into a sliceable custard as it bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pie brown attractively in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, softening the texture and carrying flavor.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, making the filling smoother and more tender.

The step that matters

Bake until set and golden. Eggs thicken as they heat, so the pie must be baked just until the centre sets. Overbaking can make the custard curdle, weep, or crack.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Sweet potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, butter, egg, lemon. 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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