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Sweet Potatoes

A baked sweet potato dish with butter, cream, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Sweet Potatoes

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Sweet Potatoes

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

  1. Boil the sweet potatoes until half cooked.

  2. Peel and slice them into ½ inch thick slices.

  3. Butter a quart baking dish well.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer the sweet potato slices in the dish.

  2. Sprinkle salt, pepper, and bits of butter over the top.

  3. Pour ½ cup of cream over the layers.

  4. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 20 minutes.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  2. Sweet potato + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Sweet potato + buttertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,491 recipes

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

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Pepper + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Pepper and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 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
Form the bulk of the dish, turning tender and soft as they bake.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the dish taste full and keeping the surface from drying.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, forming a sauce that softens the layers as they bake.

The step that matters

Boil the sweet potatoes until half cooked. Boiling only partway leaves the potatoes firm enough to hold their slices, while the oven finishes softening them. Boiling fully would make the slices break apart when layered.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Sweet potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, 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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