Name: Sweet Potato Pie
Ingredients: 1 large sweet potato; 3 eggs; Sugar to taste; Grated lemon peel (to taste); Nutmeg (to taste); Cinnamon (to taste); 1 cup milk; 1 tablespoon melted butter

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the sweet potato until tender, then mash it through a wire sieve.
Beat the egg yolks and mix them with the mashed potato.
Add sugar, grated lemon peel, nutmeg, and cinnamon, and mix well.
Stir in the milk and melted butter.
Beat the egg whites until stiff and gently fold them into the mixture.
Prepare the pie crust as directed in your preferred recipe.

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.

Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,917 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Sweet potato + cinnamontop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together539 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Sweet potato + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together414 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,950 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

Swap the lemon

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

Vanillafits better
Raisinfits about as well
Coconutfits about as well
Lemonthe original

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