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Dessert

Sweet Potato Pone

A baked sweet potato cake made with butter, sugar, milk, ginger, and orange peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,833 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Pone

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the grated sweet potato, sugar, butter, milk, powdered ginger, and orange peel.

  2. Rub the ingredients together until well mixed.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a shallow baking dish.

  2. Bake in the preheated oven for about 3 hours.

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. Ginger + orangetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Sweet potato + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together306 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Sweet potato + orangetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together191 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Sweet potato + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together596 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sweet potato
Forms the bulk of the cake and adds moisture and body to the mixture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown during long baking.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, moist texture.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps bind the mixture into a soft, cohesive batter.
Powdered ginger
Adds warm, spicy aroma and flavour that balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Bake in the preheated oven for about 3 hours. Sweet potato is dense and starchy, so it needs a long, low bake to cook through and turn soft. Baking at 300°F lets the sugars caramelise gently and the surface brown without drying or scorching the cake before the centre sets.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sweet potato, sugar, butter, milk, ginger. 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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