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Sweet Potato Balls

Small fried balls made from riced sweet potatoes, butter, egg, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, combine hot riced sweet potatoes, butter, salt, pepper, and beaten egg.

  2. If the potatoes are very dry, add hot milk to moisten the mixture.

  3. Shape the mixture into small balls.

  4. Roll the balls in flour.

Fry and drain

  1. Fry the balls in deep fat until golden brown.

  2. Drain on paper towels.

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 + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together627 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sweet potato + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,015 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 starchy base that gives the balls their soft, moist interior.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture in the mixture.
Egg
Binds the mixture so the balls hold their shape while frying.
Flour
Forms a dry coating that helps the outside brown in the fat.

The step that matters

Fry the balls in deep fat until golden brown. Frying in hot fat quickly sets and browns the flour coating while the moist interior cooks through. If the fat is too cool, the balls absorb grease and turn heavy, so the fat should be hot before the balls go in.

Swap the sweet potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, egg, flour, milk. 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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