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Dessert

Sweet Potatoes Au Gratin

Layered sweet potatoes baked with butter, sugar, salt, pepper, water, and cracker crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 Potatoes Au Gratin

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the sweet potatoes crosswise and arrange them in layers in a baking dish.

  2. Sprinkle each layer with coarse sea salt, black pepper, bits of butter, and a little sugar.

  3. Pour in 3 to 4 tablespoons of hot water mixed with 1 teaspoon of melted butter.

  4. Top with salted and peppered cracker crumbs and add bits of butter on top.

Bake and brown

  1. Cover and bake until thoroughly heated.

  2. Uncover and brown lightly.

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

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

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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 gratin and soften into a tender, creamy layered body as they bake.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the top brown and the potatoes taste rounder.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown lightly in the oven.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, golden topping that contrasts with the soft potatoes beneath.
Hot water
Adds moisture that steams the potatoes as they heat through, keeping them from drying out.

The step that matters

Uncover and brown lightly. Baking covered traps steam and keeps the top pale. Removing the lid lets surface moisture evaporate, and the sugar and butter then brown through the Maillard reaction. Watch closely, since sugar darkens quickly.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Sweet potatothe original
  4. Mustardfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, sugar. 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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