Name: Stuffed Sweet Potatoes
Ingredients: sweet potatoes; butter; cream; sugar; cinnamon; sherry wine

Why it works: Sweet potato and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 539 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Stuffed Sweet Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Select firm sweet potatoes and wash them well.
Boil the sweet potatoes until tender.
Remove from heat, cut in half, and scoop out most of the potato, leaving the skin intact.
Mash the scooped potato and mix in butter, cream, sugar, cinnamon, and sherry wine to taste.
Fill the potato skins with the mashed mixture and place in the oven to brown slightly.

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.

Sweet potato + cinnamontop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together539 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,645 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Swap the sweet potato

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

Sweet potatothe original
Capsicumfits about as well
Potatofits about as well
Arrowrootfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cream, sugar, cinnamon, sherry, wine. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.