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Dessert

Sweet Potato Gems

A baked sweet potato confection made with flour, salt, nut cream, malt or sugar, and nut milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sweet potato and flour work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 627 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Gems

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 the batter

  1. Sift the mashed sweet potato through a sieve or colander.

  2. Add flour, salt, nut cream, and malt or sugar; mix well.

  3. Stir in nut milk and beat the mixture until smooth.

Bake

  1. Pour into gem irons and bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

  2. If gem irons are unavailable, form cakes and cook on a griddle.

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. Sweet potato + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together627 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

  5. Malt + milktop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together101 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Mashed sweet potato
Provides the bulk and moist, tender body of the gems.
Flour
Gives the batter structure so it sets firm when baked.
Nut milk
Thins the batter to a pourable consistency and adds moisture.
Malt or sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown as it bakes.
Nut cream
Adds richness and fat, giving a softer, creamier crumb.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture until smooth. Thorough mixing fully hydrates the flour and evenly distributes the sweet potato, so the batter sets without lumps or dense pockets of starch.

Swap the sweet potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, cream, malt, milk):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Beetrootfits about as well
  4. Sweet potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, cream, malt, milk. 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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