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Dessert

Candied Sweet Potato

Sweet potatoes are boiled, sliced, coated with butter and sugar, then baked with water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sweet potato and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,151 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Candied Sweet Potato

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil sweet potatoes until thoroughly cooked.

  2. Remove the skin and cut them into lengthwise slices.

Bake

  1. Lay the slices in a pan close together, butter each slice, and sprinkle with sugar.

  2. Add more butter and sugar on top, then pour in 2 or 3 tablespoons of water.

  3. Bake for 1 to 2 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. Sweet potato + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,151 recipes

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

  2. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet potatoes
Form the main body of the dish, becoming soft and tender as they cook.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, helping the potatoes brown and glaze as they bake.
Sugar
Sweetens the potatoes and caramelizes on the surface during baking for a glossy coating.

The step that matters

Bake for 1 to 2 hours. Sugar caramelizes slowly, so the surface can burn if the heat is too high or the dish is left unattended. Checking for a glossy, tender result without scorching depends on watching the pan while it bakes.

Swap the sweet potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar. 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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