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Tennessee Sweet Potato Pie

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sweet potato and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 228 recipes. Both carry ethyl benzoate, which smells fruity, sweet. The science ↓

Tennessee Sweet Potato Pie

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Parboil, skin, and slice the sweet potatoes crosswise.

  2. Line a pie dish with the pastry.

  3. Layer the sweet potatoes in the dish, sprinkling thickly with sugar.

  4. Scatter a few whole cloves on top, then cover with more sweet potato slices.

  5. Repeat layering until the dish is filled.

  6. Add melted butter and pour in a little water.

  7. Cover with the remaining pastry crust.

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 + clovetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together228 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

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

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

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Clove + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,045 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sweet potato, sugar, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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