Name: Sweet Potatoes Baked with Apples
Ingredients: 4 large sweet potatoes; 1 cup sugar; ½ cup butter; 1 cup hot water; 6 medium apples

Why it works: Sweet potato and apple work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 133 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Sweet Potatoes Baked with Apples

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Scrub the sweet potatoes clean and boil until tender.
Peel and slice the potatoes into ½-inch thick slices.
Peel and slice the apples in the same way.

Assemble and bake

In a baking dish, layer the sweet potatoes and apples alternately.
Sprinkle sugar on top and scatter the butter over it.
Pour the hot water over the layers.
Bake at 300°F (150°C) for 1 hour.

Serve

Serve hot as a vegetable.

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 + appletop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together133 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,706 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Sweet potato + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,151 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Sugar + appletop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together16,478 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and apple barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Sweet potatoes: Provide the bulk of the dish and a soft, starchy texture once boiled and baked.
Apples: Add moisture and a tart fruitiness that balances the sweetness of the sugar.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the top and edges caramelize during baking.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor and helping the top brown.