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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 apple work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 133 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. 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.

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

  2. Prepare a rich pie crust and lay in slices of boiled sweet potato.

  3. Add thin slices of mellow apple on top.

  4. Spread thickly with sugar and butter, then add spices to taste.

  5. Cover with another crust and bake until golden.

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 + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together133 recipes

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

  2. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Swap the sweet potato

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

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

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

More sweet potato pie recipes

Southern 5 See all 114 →

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