Name: Sweet Potatoes
Ingredients: sweet potatoes; butter or lard

Why it works: Sweet potato and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,491 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Sweet Potatoes

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

sweet potatoes
butter or lard

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

Boil the sweet potatoes until nearly done.
Place them in cold water and peel.
Put the peeled sweet potatoes in a pan.
Add a little butter or lard.

Bake

Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until browned.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

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: Provide the main body and starchy, sweet flesh that softens and browns in the oven.
Butter or lard: Adds fat that helps the surface brown and gives a richer flavor and moist texture.

“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.