Name: How to Prepare Sweet Potatoes
Ingredients: large sweet potatoes; white sugar; butter; a little water

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 ↓

How to Prepare Sweet Potatoes

Ingredients

large sweet potatoes
white sugar
butter
a little water

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Boil or steam the sweet potatoes until nearly done.
Remove, peel, and slice them into pieces about ½ inch thick.

Bake and serve

Place the slices in a baking pan with a little water.
Sprinkle white sugar generously over the slices.
Spread butter on each slice.
Bake in the 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.

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 + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,151 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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 starchy base that softens during cooking and becomes tender inside.
White sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the surface caramelize and brown in the oven.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, helping the slices brown and carry flavor.