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Dessert

Sweet Potato Pie

A baked pie made with mashed sweet potatoes, eggs, milk, vanilla, and a pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the filling

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

  2. In a bowl, combine the mashed sweet potatoes, milk, eggs, and vanilla.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into the pie crust.

  2. Bake for 45-50 minutes or until set.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Sweet potato + vanillatop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together189 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Egg + vanillatop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27,347 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Egg and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 27,347 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
Provide the bulk and body of the filling, along with sweetness and a smooth texture when mashed.
Eggs
Set during baking to give the filling structure and a firm, sliceable texture.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the mashed filling so it bakes into a creamy custard.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs firm up as they heat, so the pie should be baked until the center no longer jiggles. Underbaking leaves a loose, runny filling, while overbaking can make it cracked or grainy.

Swap the sweet potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, vanilla. 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.

More sweet potato pie recipes

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