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Sweet Potato Corn Bread

A sweet potato and cornmeal dough baked into a bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sweet potato and corn match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 153 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Corn Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Boil the sweet potatoes until soft.

  2. Mash the hot sweet potatoes with the lard or butter.

  3. Mix in finely sifted corn meal until the mixture is stiff.

  4. Add water gradually to create a soft dough.

Rise and bake

  1. Let the dough rise for three hours or longer.

  2. Bake in a spider or a tin pan.

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 + corntop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together153 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

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

  3. 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
Provide moisture and sweetness, and bind the dough into a tender, moist texture.
Lard or butter
Adds fat, which gives the cornbread a richer flavor and softer crumb.
Corn meal
Forms the main structure of the dough, setting the body of the bread as it bakes.
Water
Hydrates the corn meal and sweet potato so the dough becomes soft and workable.

The step that matters

Add water gradually to create a soft dough.. Corn meal absorbs liquid at different rates depending on its grind and the moisture of the potatoes. Adding water slowly lets you stop when the dough is soft enough, preventing a dry, crumbly or overly sticky result.

Swap the sweet potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, corn. 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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