Skip to main content
Main

American Yams K LA Fran^aise

A baked yam dish with a butter‑cream sauce flavored with nutmeg and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

American Yams K LA Fran^aise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the yams

  1. Cut the yams into slices about ½ inch thick and trim into oval shapes.

  2. Place the yams in a pan full of water.

  3. Wash the yams.

  4. Drain the yams on a cloth.

Simmer the yams

  1. In a stewpan, combine yams with butter, salt, and nutmeg.

  2. Moisten the yams with 1 pint of water.

  3. Cover the pan.

  4. Simmer for 45 minutes, turning occasionally.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Arrange the yams in a circle on a serving dish.

  2. In a separate stewpan, mix butter and flour.

  3. Add cream, sugar, salt, and lemon juice.

  4. Stir over heat until the sauce thickens.

  5. Pour the sauce over the yams.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 (in the method)
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender as they simmer in liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour through both the yams and the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by swelling with heat once combined with the butter and liquid.
Cream
Gives the sauce body, smoothness and a rich, mellow texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich cream sauce and balances its sweetness.

The step that matters

Stir the sauce over heat until it thickens. Flour only thickens when heated long enough for its starch granules to swell. Stopping too early leaves a thin sauce, while overheating or boiling hard can cause the cream to separate or scorch on the base of the pan.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes