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Sweet Potatoes in Stock

Sweet potatoes baked in soup stock with allspice, salt, pepper, and celery salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Sweet Potatoes in Stock

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Parboil the sweet potatoes for 20 minutes.

  2. Peel the sweet potatoes carefully and cut them in halves.

  3. Place the slices in a shallow baking dish.

Season and bake

  1. Sprinkle with allspice, salt, pepper, and celery salt.

  2. Pour the soup stock over the sweet potatoes.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven, basting frequently until tender and slightly brown.

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. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,422 recipes

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

  4. Sweet potato + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together105 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

  5. Sweet potato + celerytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together162 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet potatoes
Make up the body of the dish; their starch softens and turns tender as they cook.
Soup stock
Adds liquid that keeps the potatoes moist and carries savory flavour as they bake.
Allspice
Adds warm, aromatic spice notes that season the potatoes.

The step that matters

Basting frequently while baking. Oven heat slowly evaporates the stock and dries the surface of the potatoes. Regular basting replaces that moisture, keeps the flesh tender, and helps the exposed surfaces brown evenly.

Swap the sweet potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (allspice, pepper, celery):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Sweet potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against allspice, pepper, celery. 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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