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Dessert

Sweet-potato Waffles

A batter of mashed sweet potatoes, butter, sugar, flour, milk, and salt cooked in a waffle iron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Sweet-potato Waffles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the mashed sweet potatoes, butter, sugar, flour, milk, and salt.

  2. Beat the mixture well until smooth.

Cook the waffles

  1. Preheat the waffle iron and pour the batter into it.

  2. Cook until golden brown and crisp.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Flour
Provides the starch that gives the waffles their structure as the batter sets.
Milk
Supplies liquid that thins the batter and adds moisture and tenderness.
Butter
Adds fat for richer flavor and helps the waffles crisp at the edges.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown during cooking.
Mashed sweet potatoes
Add moisture, natural sweetness and a soft texture to the batter.

The step that matters

Cooking until golden brown and crisp. Sugar and starches brown through the Maillard reaction at high heat. Removing the waffles too early leaves them soft inside, while leaving them too long can scorch the sugars and make them bitter.

Swap the sweet potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, 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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