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Dessert

Sweet Potato Cake

A baked cake made from sweet potatoes, eggs, sugar, butter, flour, baking soda, and cream of tartar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Yam and flour share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 63 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Parboil the yams and grate them.

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs with the sugar and butter until well combined.

  3. Mix in the flour, baking soda, and cream of tartar.

Bake

  1. Slowly add the grated yams and the egg whites, mixing gently.

  2. Pour the batter into three square shallow pans.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden and set.

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. Yam + flourtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together63 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Butter and flour 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

Yams
Provide the starchy, moist bulk that gives the cake its body.
Eggs
Add structure and set the cake as they cook.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crumb brown as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with acid in the batter to help it rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter and stabilizes the egg whites for lift.

Swap the yam

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Arrowrootfits about as well
  4. Yamthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, butter, flour, 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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