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Dessert

Sweet Potato Pie

A custard pie made from sweet potatoes, eggs, butter, milk, sugar, and salt.

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 Pie

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 filling

  1. Boil the sweet potatoes until tender, then mash them finely.

  2. Add salt and butter to the mashed potatoes.

  3. Beat the eggs until light and mix them in.

  4. Add enough sweet milk to create a custard-like consistency.

  5. Sweeten to taste and pour the mixture into a pie crust.

Bake

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set, similar to pumpkin custard.

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 + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together596 recipes

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

  3. Sweet potato + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,151 recipes

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

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet potatoes
Provide the main body and bulk of the filling once mashed smooth.
Eggs
Set the filling into a sliceable custard as they cook.
Sweet milk
Loosens the mash and forms a custard-like texture with the eggs.
Butter
Adds richness and fat for a smoother, more tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and adds to its browning during baking.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs thicken as their proteins coagulate with heat. Underbaking leaves the custard runny, while overbaking can make it cracked or grainy.

Swap the sweet potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, milk, 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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