Skip to main content
Dessert

Sweet Potato Buns

Sweet potato buns are yeast dough rolls flavored with allspice and sweetened with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sweet potato and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 105 recipes. Both carry ethyl benzoate, which smells fruity, sweet. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Buns

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 the dough

  1. Boil sweet potatoes until soft, then peel and mash them while hot.

  2. In a bowl, combine the mashed sweet potatoes with flour, sugar, allspice, and yeast.

  3. Knead in the butter until well incorporated.

  4. Let the dough rise until doubled in size.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into small rolls and place them on a baking sheet.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden 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.

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 + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together105 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

  2. Flour + sweet potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together627 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,302 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure that holds the dough and rolls together.
Mashed sweet potatoes
Adds moisture and softness, and a naturally sweet flavor.
Active dry yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and become airy.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and richer flavor.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning in the crust.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until doubled in size. Yeast needs enough time to produce gas and build structure; underproofed dough bakes up dense, while overproofed dough can collapse or lose its shape.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, coffee, sweet potato, sugar, butter):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, coffee, sweet potato, sugar, butter. 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.

You might also like

Deep-Fried Potato BallsDeep-Fried Potato Balls119 recipesCoffee Ice CreamCoffee Ice Cream91 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesCoffee CustardCoffee Custard27 recipes