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Baked Sweet Potatoes

A dish of sweet potatoes baked with butter, sugar, and cream or milk, sometimes served with roast beef or pork.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Baked Sweet Potatoes

Why it works: Butter and cream 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 ↓

Baked Sweet Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Parboil

  1. Parboil or steam the sweet potatoes until nearly done.

  2. Place them in a roasting pan with a roast of beef or pork to finish cooking.

Prepare the yams

  1. Steam the yams until tender.

  2. Peel the yams.

  3. Slice the yams.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer the yams in a buttered pudding dish.

  2. Sprinkle each layer with bits of butter and 2 teaspoons of sugar.

  3. Pour 1 cup of cream or milk over the yams.

  4. Bake until 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + creamtop 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 + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,151 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet potatoes
Form the main body of the dish, cooking down into a tender, starchy base.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor, and helps the top brown in the oven.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface caramelize as it bakes.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the layers soft as they bake.

The step that matters

Parboil until nearly done. The potatoes must be soft enough to slice and layer but not fully falling apart. Starch in them gelatinizes as it cooks, and overcooking before baking leaves a mushy dish, while undercooking leaves firm, chalky pieces.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  1. Potatofits about as well
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Sweet potatothe original
  4. Chivefits about as well

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